


the last great canadian dynasty

by fairmanor



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: 20 Years in Schitt's Creek, Angst, Autumn, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Patrick Loses Money Too, Patrick is an Oblivious Idiot, Rich!Patrick, Role Reversal AU, Rose Apothecary (Schitt's Creek), Wall Street, alternating povs, cabaret, festive fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 43,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26390629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairmanor/pseuds/fairmanor
Summary: After 20 years in Schitt’s Creek, David Rose is practically native. The Roses had long ago lost hope that anyone vaguely resembling themselves would ever come to town…cue Patrick Brewer. Overachiever, Harvard MBA graduate, and one of the youngest business moguls Wall Street has ever seen. Well, before everything came crashing down.A role reversal AU, of sorts.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 55
Kudos: 132





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> \- Hello! I'm super excited to share this fic, and with it all of my autumnal aesthetic fantasies. The fact that we never really got to see Schitt's Creek in the fall is a travesty.
> 
> \- Many thanks to justwaiting23 for putting up with my grumbling about coding (among other encouragements!)
> 
> \- Updates weekly.
> 
> \- Here is the link to the playlist I've made for this fic, to listen as you read (if you like): [LCGD Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5NuFs2boYbOWsJdBVR7cQN?si=QKc0Q-FYTAetyQ5LMeGL3A)

**4:19 pm**

**Now Playing: Rocket Man by Elton John**

⏮️⏸️⏩

**Swipe to unlock screen**

It was the time of year again when the world looked like a video game.

To be specific, it was a very particular folk horror video game that this post-summer turn of the season brought to mind for David Rose. The game that had often seen him, Stevie, and a bunch of other bored teens through all the bleak, depressing Friday afternoons of their early 2000s IT classes. The houses in the game were all pale and timber-clad, bordered by rickety picket fences and white birch trees. It would start off quietly when it loaded, the only perceptible noises being the crunch of the character’s footsteps on animated golden-brown leaves and the rustling of Mutt’s bag of Cheetos as the group crowded around Stevie, who would be hunched over the ancient computer in her hooded plaid jacket. She would never let anyone else play. As far as David could remember, there wasn’t really any purpose to the game. At some point, after a lot of aimless walking in circles around the autumnal neighborhood, a monster or a demon or something would spring out and rip the character to bits, and they would all scream and gag at the gory jump scare on the screen until Jocelyn told them all to get to work and they’d scarper back to their plastic seats.

The memory wasn’t anything particularly significant to David. It was just a video game, after all. But there was something about it that infused his surroundings every fall with a little bit of nostalgia for those days; the days where it was dark before 3pm, and the scratched glass and harsh light of the grainy computer prickled his eyes. The air was, as it had been for the past twenty years on this exact day, wet and piney and steeped thick with fog. There was something about September 1st, when the afternoon was tipping over its peak like the highest point of a fairground ride, that was always the same. There had been never been a sunny one for as long as David had lived here.

He liked it better than the heat. It was comforting. Sometimes, Stevie and Mutt and his other classmates managed to evade the monster for longer than usual and the character made it to its own town centre, the one that looked rather like the main street of Schitt’s Creek. The café lights were the same shade of yellow as in real life and the on-screen general store was donned in the same gourds and papier mache turkeys. If the game had been advanced enough to have a scent, David always imagined that it would smell of apple pie and boots.

But right now, those moments of comfort and hygge seemed a little further away, because he was storming angrily through the drenching fog and fine rain. Tiny droplets of condensation sprayed at his cheeks and wreaked havoc on his hair as he fought against the first autumn chill.

Oh, and he was going to fucking _kill_ Stevie Budd.

He could just see the motel in the distance, but for every step he took he felt like he was further away. After what felt like double the time it usually took, David finally crossed the flat plain of dying grass, tramping in a way that must have looked ridiculous to avoid getting his shoes any wetter than they already were, and made it to the motel reception door. The door handle was freezing. As he yanked it open, fat droplets of rain shook off the end of it. He was greeted by a burst of artificial warmth that would have been comforting if it didn’t mean Stevie had bust out that horrible, skin-parching portable heater.

“The central broke,” Stevie said tiredly from behind the desk, not looking up from her tattered paperback – some shitty looking book-of-the-film called _Banshees on a Plane_ – as though she knew David was about to grill her about the heater, like he had been ever since she’d bought it for her first winter as receptionist at the motel.

David stalked over and slapped a thick orange chequebook on the table. The front of it was sopping wet. David wondered if after fifteen years it had finally met its match with the rain outside.

“You owe me a favor, Stevie.”

Stevie raised her eyebrow at the book, then lowered it to offer David the plainest, most deadpan expression she could muster. She thumbed at the almost-empty cheques, all ripped out and cashed in over the years.

“I thought we were rationing.”

The Book of Favors dated back to David and Stevie’s senior year at high school. Stevie had stolen the empty chequebook from her great aunt’s office, the one that was now hers, and flung it across to David from one side of the Chem 2 lab to the other.

“To keep track,” she’d said. “I’m sick of you short-changing me.” David had glared at her as he flipped open the chequebook, the sight of the dotted lines and _promise to pay the bearer_ reminding him of his thirteenth birthday – the last normal one for a long time – when his mother had slipped a hastily-written sum of $130,000 under his pillow, then neglected to mention his birthday for the rest of the day. Written on the opening page had been Stevie’s request, the first of many:

_Two drinks – because you forced me to come to Ted’s dumb party last week._

He'd stared at her hard as he ripped it out. The notched paper made a satisfying _zip_ as it came away from the binder. That night, David had swiped for her not two, but three mini bottles of his mom’s Cherry Noir Grey Goose, and they’d drunk them in the honeymoon suite of the motel and woken up the next morning to find themselves mysteriously out of possession of their virginities.

“Not rationing anymore until you make up for what you did to me this morning,” David said, staring down at Stevie from the tip of his nose.

“What are you wearing?”

“Don’t change the subject,” he snapped.

“It’s a dress.” Stevie tilted her head one way and the other in an exaggerated manner, like she was trying to work out which way up the garment was supposed to be. “Wait. _Is_ it a dress…?”

David drew his arms defensively over the black, baggy item of clothing.

“It’s a – it’s a very masculine _,_ very fashionable piece of clothing. Yes, I suppose one could call it a dress.”

“And you made it yourself?” Stevie’s tone was dripping with scepticism, like it was definitely not something he should be proud of.

“Oh my God, I’m _improving._ You can’t talk to me about clothing, I thought you’d have given up the whole drunken lumberjack look by now. Stick a tool belt over your pants and you might pass as a washed-up roleplay porn star. Anyway, open the favors. I’ve already written it out.”

Stevie opened the book up.

_A 14-inch meat lover’s combo takeout pizza, a night out at the Wobbly Elm, and also put in a good word for me with Olivia the hot new cleaner at the Café – because you told me that the general store was closing._

“What the fuck is this?”

“It’s my favor request.”

Stevie scoffed at the ridiculous request, flicking the book away from her with a fingertip. “This makes no sense! You’re destroying the integrity of the sacred Book.”

“No, listen.” David swept his finger in a wide circle and cleared his throat. “ _You_ told me the general store, i.e. my place of work may at some point in the not-so-distant future be closing, which gave _me_ the idea to think about putting in a lease application, thereby pitting me against Christmas World, which my mother is now advocating for in my place because after the whole money debacle when we were kids she’s convinced our family is cursed to fail every time we try and pursue a new business venture.”

Stevie stared at him with her eyes narrowed appraisingly. “Huh. Well, that sounds like a you problem.”

“Who was the one who told me to put my money where my mouth is?”

“That was before I remembered you talk out of your ass,” Stevie shot back. David scoffed. He knew there was no bite in it. He was pretty sure that he and Stevie had just been saying things for the sake of it for as long as they’d known each other.

“You can maybe have the toppings off _my_ meat lover’s combo pizza, which you will sit there and watch me eat,” she went on.

“You’re a disease.”

“Yup, and you’ve got me for life.”

David ripped out the favor and slapped it down in front of her. “I know. Make it worth my while, Budd.”

“You know I always do,” Stevie called after David as he sauntered away from the desk. He briefly considered a spare raincoat that was hanging on the rack next to the reception, and was about to leave it when a huge belch of thunder bore down on the town. He sighed, then sacrificed his dignity to the color-clashing microfibers and left the room, his hair blissfully covered, albeit in a monstrous lime green hood.

* * *

“Your tantrum is ceased, I assume?” Moira called from the living room as David returned, shaking the rain from his very core. It seemed to have gotten a lot faster and denser with every step he’d taken from the motel.

If looks through walls could kill, then Moira would be picking chunks of plaster out of her bones for all eternity. David couldn’t see her from where he stood in the hallway, but he knew where she would be: right on the other side of the wall, looming over her big, shiny sewing machine with its lamp and seven different stitch settings, her corded glasses perched on the end of her nose.

“Never,” David called back. Giving his hair a final shake like a dog, he rounded the corner to glare at her from there.

Moira stared up pointedly as he approached. “Well, don’t look at me, dear.”

“Who else do I have to look at? You sabotaged me today.”

Moira tutted as she readjusted the needle and pushed the pedal down, the fabric beneath it bunching and puckering as she dragged it along. “Seat yourself. After I finish this, I’d quite like to start another project with you.”

“I’m not in the mood to –”

“ _Da_ -vid, my little protégé, come and sit beside your Mummy,” Moira whined.

David watched her for a moment more. Her hands looked so small in comparison to the huge, hulking plastic of the sewing machine. He rolled his eyes and sat beside her, taking out his phone.

“What’s it gonna be this time?” he said.

Moira unhooked her work in progress from the machine and sat back, considering. “Hm. I have a hankering for some delightful little Thom Browne piece, I think.”

David smiled, trying not to let on that he was thinking the exact same thing. As he scrolled down the webpage of eye-watering prices, an odd sense of calm and belonging washed over him.

“This one,” he decided, propping up his phone on the desk. Moira squinted at the sweater on the screen.

“Black crewneck pullover, four-bar stripe on the sleeves, ribbed cuffs…I do like these little animal creatures knitted into it – oh, I’m not sure where we’ll find any fine Merino wool in our immediate vicinity, darling.”

Where a sixteen-year-old David might have stamped his foot, the thirty-three-year-old David just shrugged. “I can make do with any wool.”

“Very well. We shall see what we can do, shan’t we?”

And just like that, Moira’s betrayal earlier that day was momentarily salved by their bonding over the sewing machine. David sketched out the net of the sweater he wanted while Moira rooted around in her various cupboards and boxes for grosgrain ribbon and measuring tape. After forty minutes of quiet work, David went to the kitchen to heat them both a cup of soup. When he returned, the steaming tomato fogging up his glasses on the way, he sat down more timidly than he had when he first entered.

David took a breath. Even after twenty years of steadily improving communication with his parents, expressing his feelings still felt like passing a kidney stone sometimes. “I…just wanted you to know that what you did at the council this morning really hurt me.”

Moira sighed heavily. “David, you must understand that there are certain things we must sacrifice if we are to preserve our dignity here, and I strongly disbelieve that an attempt to start a business is included in any celestial forecast for your life!” Her voice was inflecting upwards again, like it always did when she was trying to make a point but knew she was grasping at straws.

David scoffed. “I don’t think dignity is even in the question anymore. I gave up any hope of regaining it in college.”

“You gave up a lot of things in college, David,” Moira said airily, “including college. I’d like you to trust me on this one.”

“You say that for everything!” David retorted, the voice he inherited from his mother rising upwards as well. “You’ve never said any of this to Dad over the years, when he was trying to get all those stupid business ideas like the bagel place up and running.”

“Bob’s Bagels had a very respectable four months of runtime, which is far longer than any of us could have hoped for with a man as emotionally unstable as Mr. Currie in charge. Anyway, your father –”

As if on cue, Johnny Rose’s voice rang loud and clear from his office upstairs.

“You cannot be serious!”

David frowned, looking up at the ceiling. There wasn’t any way his dad could have overheard their conversation, so he wondered what Johnny was getting so worked up about.

He didn’t have to wonder forever, though, because it wasn’t long before Johnny was bent over in the doorway, breathless from almost tripping down the stairs. David twisted himself round. His father’s eyebrows were knotted in the way that could have either meant he was shocked, frazzled, upset, or he just found out something juicy about one of the former associates who’d left him high and dry over two decades ago.

“There’s been a huge stock and securities scam uncovered within Wall Street,” Johnny said. “Big investors wrung out, people losing money all over the place.”

So, the last one then.

David rolled his eyes. “Honestly, from the way you ran down the stairs, I thought it was gonna be something interesting.”

“It is!” Johnny said gleefully, his teeth bared in a wide smile. “I recognize half the people who’ve lost all their savings. All the people who treated us like dirt when it happened to us. They’ve got a taste of our medicine for once.” He left the room with his laptop balanced precariously on one palm, reading aloud as he scrolled down. “That’s a lot of people. There’s the Mason brothers, Kohl, Farrow, Eriksen, Brewer, Van Ness, Cheng…”

David stood up to clear his and Moira’s empty cups of soup away, listening to his father soothe himself by reciting the names of the newly disgraced wolves of Wall Street. It reminded David of the way he himself used to like hearing about drama at school that had nothing to do with him. Granted, there was a lot of drama that _did_ involve him; more than everyone else put together, probably. But when it didn’t, it was almost therapeutic to be on the side lines, watching curses hurled across the canteen and young feelings getting their first break-in, all the while knowing that he wouldn’t be hit on the head by any of its debris. He supposed that was how his dad felt now. If there was an opposite to self-flagellation, then he supposed Johnny’s deliberate relishing of this random news would be it. Schadenfreude.

Having worked out the pattern and scope of the new designer piece they were trying to replicate, David and Moira retired their hobby for the night. David made himself a tooth-threateningly sweet latte with whipped cream, grated chocolate, and enough cinnamon to put all those 2012 YouTube challenges to shame. Then he took it to his room and let it cool on his bedside table as he showered off the freezing cold day.

When he was out, he twisted his hair up into a small towel and threw on a thick, fuzzy hoodie. It was one he’d found by chance in the Marshall’s in Elm Valley’s strip mall. At $40 for a Bianca Chandon piece he knew the store were criminally underselling themselves, but he wasn’t about to tell them that. He was comfortable and warm enough to wear just that as he sat cross-legged on his bed, scrolling through his emails and Twitter feed on his laptop. He had three unread emails:

_**[5:01 pm]** sexylexy123@mail.com: DAVID I’m emailing this because dad confiscated my phone. I’m…_

_**[5:32 pm]** Gossip Room Weekly: Wall Street Scandal: PB & Co Manager left ‘broke’ as funds…_

_**[6:14 pm]** Rural Eats: David Rose, a friend has gifted you! Check your porch in 20 minutes for a…_

David clicked open the most recent one.

From: Rural Eats

Subject: Look out bumpkin, someone’s given you a pumpkin! 🥞 🍝 🍕

To: david.rose83@mail.com

David Rose, a friend has gifted you! Check your porch in 20 minutes for a hot, delicious takeout straight to your door! Delivery will be charged on arrival. Lucky you, farmer! 😉

Custom message from giver: Sending the first part of your STUPID favor through Rural Eats because I know u hate their cutesy corporate emails. Also, I texted Olivia the hot new cleaner. Turns out she’s a lesbian. Enjoy your pizza I hope it is soggy upon arrival – S.B.

It was 6:33pm now, nineteen minutes after the email was sent. David threw on some boxers and bolted it downstairs to collect his pizza. The doorbell rang and David cracked open the door just enough to grab the pizza and throw a couple of notes in the direction of the deliverer before double-stepping back up to his room. He resumed his position on the bed and lifted the lid of the pizza box, breathing in deeply as the rich, calming smell of hot cheese and meat filled his nose. As he ate, he clicked open one of the other emails on his screen.

From: sexylexy123@mail.com

Subject: tattoo guy situation update

To: david.rose83@mail.com

DAVID I’m emailing this because dad confiscated my phone. I’m sending this from the library in Elmdale lolz. Basically me and Twyla have spent literal days now trying to track down the guy who gave us those matching back tattoos at the county fair afterparty because they’ve both gone all green and weepy. Well, we FOUND him in this TRAILER PARK and asked him what we should do then he ignored us so we climbed into the truck where he keeps all his tattoo needles and things then he STARTED DRIVING WHEN WE WERE IN IT so then we were driving for ages and for some reason we ended up here and Twyla’s phone is DEAD so –

David closed the email and sighed. In a few minutes, he knew he’d have to put on way more clothes than he originally planned on this chilled-out night and go and collect a livid, nattering Alexis and profusely apologising Twyla from Elmdale, scratching at their stupid back tattoos. He ate a few more slices of his pizza morosely and wiped some of the grease off his fingers. The he opened the last unread email as he shoved on his sweatpants:

From: Gossip Room Weekly

Subject: Subscriber’s Rundown: Kylie Jenner Pregnancy Rumors, ‘A Star is Born’ Cast Revealed, Stock Bust-Up Sees Big Investors Penniless

To: david.rose83@mail.com

Wall Street Scandal! PB Enterprises Manager left ‘broke’ as funds are targeted by the long-running Endcom scam

Among the many who lost their hard-earned seven-figure net worth this week was P. Brewer, the secretive CEO of investment firm PB & Co. At 29, Brewer was one of the youngest businessmen to make such a successful stir with his quick-witted and often reckless trading, which…

David clicked off the screen and sent the boring email to Trash. He grabbed his keys and an umbrella and headed out the door to go pick up his sister and her gangrenous tattoo.

The journeys there and back were as expected: dark, drenched in rain, and embellished with Alexis and Twyla's Wild Adventure of the Day.

“And then he just started growling, it was like a – wasn’t it, Twy? Would you say that was a growl?”

“It was more of a grizzle, really.”

David gripped the steering wheel tighter. “Okay, so we’ve established that the man made some kind of subhuman noise. Can we proceed with the story now, please?”

Twyla nodded her head floppily. David was glad he hadn’t let either of them try and get back to Schitt’s Creek in their state, intoxicated on both alcohol and adrenaline.

“So we looked around his trailer yard, and then I remembered where I’d seen him before! My stepsister’s wedding! Anyway, we found his truck where we’d got the tattoos in and we were right! We were right, the needles _were_ dirty! So we started counting our blessings that we didn’t get tetanus like my second cousin Billy, and then…”

David couldn’t stay mad at them for dragging him out on his attempted quiet evening in. God, they were both so _weird,_ and he loved them. He let the umpteenth instalment in Alexis and Twyla’s seemingly never-ending adventure saga wash over his head as he drove them home. As soon as he’d dropped Twyla off and sent Alexis flying through their house to find her confiscated phone, David got a text through from Stevie. It was a photo of the coffee table in the motel reception, which had two bottles of wine and two glasses on it.

**Big Dick Stevie:** _it’s not the Wobbly Elm, but I can’t exactly drink out of two glasses at once…_ 🍷?

Having long since given up on his ideas of peace for the night, David was back out of the door within minutes.

* * *

The sofa in the motel reception had seen a lot. It was practically sagging with stains and felt like a pile of screws covered in plastic wrap. David and Stevie had once accidentally witnessed the poor piece of furniture see far too much of that redneck couple who came to stay once. Unbeknown to them as they got busy on the couch, a horrified 22-year-old David and Stevie had been cowering behind the front desk the whole time, too shocked to speak up.

It had seen a lot of the progression of their friendship, too. There had been a few weeks when they were nineteen where the Roses were convinced that they’d found a way out of the town with some Southern fatcat called Andy Roberts. Stevie and David had sat on the couch then, while Stevie talked David out of his ridiculous idea of them both going to college in New York together and buying a penthouse.

“What do you mean, just _get into_ Juilliard?” Stevie had said. “You know it’s expensive, right?”

David shrugged, turning his palms out. “You know, just get in! I know, like, three people from my middle school who got in last year. You can sing. And I auditioned for theatre elementary school.”

“You auditioned for elementary school...?”

_“Theatre_ elementary school,” David corrected. And Stevie had thought about just how much David still had to learn about life.

After fourteen more years, David was confident that he’d learned pretty well, even if that kind of upheaval at such a young age made for some serious early adolescent trauma. He had stopped running away to meet with so-called old friends who paraded him round clubs and VIP parties like he was a circus attraction and left him shivering at service stations. He no longer cared that this wasn’t the Tenreiro sofa or the Texas king mattress he’d had at the mansion. _Comfortable_ was a concept David had managed to pack a lot of meaning into over the years, stuffing it to the brim with new favourite foods and wholesome memories until he really _felt_ the word. That was why he had made his peace with this couch long ago and could almost forget about the bag-of-nails feeling as he drunk himself into a slur with his best friend, like he had done every other week for the past decade. The raindrops staggering down the outside window quivered and shone in the dingy light of the lobby like pearly little LEDs, the sound of them coming down hard and pebbly on the windowsill and roof. And when it was so cold outside, David could hardly be mad about Stevie’s horrible heater. It had its moments, this life.

“You know, this has been one hell of a day for the outside world,” Stevie said, taking a sip of wine then swirling it around in her glass. “Something about a Kardashian…everyone is flying at each other’s throats for some reason on Twitter…and apparently a load of billionaires got scammed. Ha! I’m glad they did.”

“You know what I love doing on the internets? Looking at all the people who I used to know at my old school making fools of themselves. It’s like…” David drained his glass as he thought of a way to articulate it, then poured himself another. “It’s like, I could have _been_ those people.”

“You were, for a while. I think you were about twenty-one before you actually accepted your fate here.”

“Remember how I kept running away?”

“Uh, yes. Do I need to break out the yearbook and remind you what your ‘Most Likely’ award was?”

And then Stevie did just that, spreading the grid of black-and-white, acned faces. She pointed at David’s face, a couple of blocks below her awkward ‘Most Likely to Get the Guy’ photo.

“See. ‘Most Likely to Go to Prison’.”

“Absolutely incorrect. Can you imagine _this_ in prison?” David gestured down his body dramatically, trying to run the length of his torso to his knees with his hand, but only succeeded in spilling wine down his hoodie. He swatted Stevie’s arm as she cackled and snorted. Then they started scrapping on the couch, pushing each other away with their clawing hands and feet, until a fast, frantic knock at the door interrupted them. David almost had Stevie in a headlock when it happened. As she scrambled into a sitting position David was still fighting to hold her down.

“Ow, David! What if it’s a new guest –”

She was cut off by a huge crack of lightning. They shrieked and clutched each other tighter as they laughed, the wine making the whole situation much funnier than it probably was.

“Stevie, you need to let them in. They’ll be all wet.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.”

Stevie clambered up from the couch and tried to peek through the gap in the door and its frame before unhooking the latch and pulling it open.

From his vantage point on the couch, David could look a lot more intently at the stranger without seeming rude or nosey. On the other side of the door, sodden and dejected to the very bone, stood a man. He was shorter than average, but the way he was dressed more than made up for his stature. Before Johnny had given up some of the old tailored suits for softer shirts and fisherman’s sweaters, he used to wear things quite like what this man was wearing. Sleek, slate-grey Armani that was cut as tight and sharp as steel, fitting him so well it was as though he’d been born in it. His hair might have been plastered to the crown of his head in that precise moment, but David could picture it buzzed and scraped in some perfect Turkish barber’s cut that probably cost more than his weekly grocery bill. His suitcase, likely full of similar suits and pointy Italian shoes, lay at his feet, soaking in the rain.

He looked terrible.

He also really, really didn’t.

Stevie gaped at him for a few seconds before coming to her senses and ushering him into the room.

“I, uh, I wasn’t expecting anyone tonight,” she rambled, scurrying to hide away the wine. David took the glasses and hid them behind a flat, raggedy cushion. The man turned to him for a half a moment, just long enough to look him up and down before he made his way to the desk, where Stevie was clicking away at the computer trying to fit in a reservation. David heard the man mumble an apology and something about it being an emergency.

“Okay, I think I can put you into Room 6,” Stevie said. “Can I have a name, number and address?”

The man cleared his throat. He briefly turned his head to where David was sitting, as though to check he was no longer listening. David crossed his legs over his loungewear and pretended to focus on the huge painting of the deer behind the front desk.

“Can you just put my name down as P. Brewer?”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Here is the link to the playlist I've made for this fic, to listen as you read (if you like): [LCGD Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5NuFs2boYbOWsJdBVR7cQN?si=QKc0Q-FYTAetyQ5LMeGL3A)

Patrick had been driving for nine hours when his Sat Nav started getting screwy and sent him turning off in directions that he was only half sure wouldn’t lead to a murderer’s cabin in the woods. Even so, his plans to book it straight to his parent’s house in this car, one of the only possessions he had left to his name, had been fraying long before the stupid navigation device went on the blink. It was ironic, really. Three years of smooth sailing in his enviable, luxury Bugatti and it had turned on him as soon as the rest of the world did.

“Turn right in two hundred yards for Schitt’s Creek,” the Sat Nav croaked. Only it pronounced the name funnily, and it came out sounding like “Skit’s Crick”. Patrick had to look down at the screen to see how the town’s name was actually spelled.

“Schitt’s Creek,” he murmured aloud, in the proper way. “Schitt’s Creek.” And then he laughed so hard he cried. After a few minutes of that, he was pretty sure he was just crying.

Patrick did as the machine said, and was sort of relieved that he hadn’t yet told his parents that he had been planning on coming to theirs after he’d been evicted. This aptly named town was a convenient out. The sight of the first few houses, splintering and crumbling and littered with hay, looking like they belonged to people named Farmer Giles or the Peabodies, only cemented Patrick’s presumption that no one here would know who he was.

His phone had run out of battery as well about an hour before he stopped, so Patrick was forced to listen to the rusty tunes of some yeehaw radio station. The flying of pine trees in the dark and the methodical thump of his windscreen wipers had him buoyed in a gentle state of distraction, but the rough, twanging voice of the local yokel singer and his cover of _Like Jesus Does_ made everything feel weird and disassociating, like he was driving his way into a gothic horror show. Or the forest where Slenderman lived.

Just as he was losing hope that he would survive the night without being chased out of town by some demon farmer or mauled by a bear, Patrick caught sight of a strip of lights off to the left. There was something different about each window – a TV flickering in one, someone pulling the curtains shut in another – so he assumed that the people behind each light all had their own business, and didn’t know each other. A motel. He looked down at his dead phone, and sighed. John Paulson had once told him, with a clap to the shoulder and a scrub of his hair, that Patrick was welcome in his Upper East townhouse anytime. But John had also spent the past three years of Patrick’s career trying to set him up with one of his daughters, so maybe Patrick shouldn’t have felt so disappointed to have missed out on the opportunity.

As he pulled up to the motel, Patrick wondered where they all were now. All the investors and hedge fund managers who raked in billions more than him, the ones who would leave him starstruck as he went into work every morning. The ones who were surprisingly nice and down to earth, as well as the ones who genuinely looked like they wouldn’t say no to eating human flesh. He felt embarrassed when he thought about where he was. Granted, he wasn’t the only one who had fallen for the stupid scam. He wasn’t the only one who had sunk all his savings into a shell and been ignored, hyperinflated and then popped like a balloon, his own personal Great Depression. But the difference was, between him and those other investors, that Patrick didn’t have rich parents or a 95-acre ranch estate to crawl and hide in. He just had himself, and a Bugatti that he would soon run out of gas for and never be able to refill. Because he wasn’t entirely immune to the disposable wealth that had come with his job, he had come to be extremely specific about where his gas came from.

He didn’t let the hard, thundering rain quicken his pace to the reception of the motel. It was nice to feel the deluge that he’d been wiping away from his windshield for the past few hours, to feel it wash off all the pieces of him he wasn’t ready to confront yet.

There was a warm light emanating from the building, and through the cracked, tangled blinds on the window he could see a man and a woman, cackling and sloshing wine everywhere on the couch as they grappled at each other’s faces and thumped each other’s thighs. He watched them for a moment, and couldn’t decide if they were siblings or a couple. There was something well-worn and intimate about their interaction, as though they had once been as close as siblings, tried their time as a couple and were now settled in a middle ground that was probably confusing to some and would be impossible to maintain for a weaker set of people.

Patrick shook himself out of his over analysis of the two strangers. The rain started coming down harder. Thunder was looming. He needed to be inside _now._

He knocked, hard and fast, on the door. The noises stopped. He heard them argue and wrestle for a second more.

“Ow, David! What if it’s a new guest –”

Suddenly, Patrick was surrounded by a flash of lightning from far above that he could see behind his eyes.

“Stevie, you need to let them in. They’ll be all wet.”

“Okay, okay, I’m going.”

Patrick blinked hard and hopped from foot to foot in the torrential rain, growing more miserable by the second, when the door swung open and he was suddenly face to face with the woman, her black hair mussed and her mouth stained red with wine.

He stepped inside at the woman’s invitation, too distracted by the wonderful warmth from the tall space heater to listen to her rambling or the way the pair were scrambling to hide the wine. Like he cared. He stared into the heater and let it warm his face and sting his eyes, the wire behind the black grate glowing red like the end of a cigarette.

He cleared his throat. What was he supposed to say? “Uh, I. Sorry about – the, the intrusion. It’s kind of an…emergency stay.”

The woman looked at him oddly, taking in his wet suit and plastered hair. He probably looked like shit. He wondered what she was assuming about him. A jilted husband, thrown from his penthouse after being caught in bed with his assistant? A crooked businessman running away from imprisonment for money laundering? The possibilities were endless. He just hoped she didn’t see him the way he saw himself: a lost, former billionaire who'd never, for one moment of his working life, felt wealthy.

The man was staring at him with his nose perched over the armchair, his hands on either side of his face like Kilroy. Patrick moved up to the reception and the man turned with him too, his eyes trained on him like one of those creepy paintings. He curved to the left so that he was dividing his attention between both of them equally. It was a while since Patrick had seen a man dressed like that, in anything other than his best, not trying to score thin lacerations into the spirit of his peers with every flash of his shark’s incisors or every wink of his hard, steely eyes. He’d forgotten there were people who didn’t care. People sporting slightly damp sleepwear with wine ringed red round their lips.

It was a while since Patrick had seen anyone so effortlessly gorgeous.

“Okay, I think I can put you into Room 6,” the woman said, clicking in some boxes on the ancient computer screen. “Can I have a name, number and address?”

Patrick cleared his throat nervously, shoving his hands into his pockets. As much as the two people he’d met so far in this town intrigued him, anonymity was a game he’d learned to throw the dice for long ago, and he played it so skilfully that it came easier than revealing his actual name. He didn’t want them listening. Or knowing. Or judging. He locked eyes with the man on the couch and the man looked away quickly.

“Can you just put my name down as P. Brewer?”

There was a pause. Then behind him, the man made a sound that was like the lovechild of a choke and a yelp. Patrick ignored it.

The woman – who had just now clipped a badge to her chest with the name ‘Stevie’ on, presumably for the sake of professionalism – narrowed her eyes.

“Not getting a first name, then?”

“Do you need one?” Patrick said.

Stevie shrugged. “I mean, you could be anyone.”

“I know, that’s kind of the point,” Patrick said, a little testily. Well, _he_ thought it was a little testy. The look on Stevie’s face told him that he’d probably spat the words out in that impatient way he’d gotten used to since his career really took off. She made eyes with the couch and raised her brow, not trying to hide any of it from Patrick.

“Fine – fine. Sorry. It’s…been a long day,” he murmured. “It’s Patrick.”

“Ooh, _Patrick.”_

Patrick turned around. The man snorted into the new glass of wine he’d just filled up. Patrick fixed him with his hardest glower, the one that had once made the people who arrived a minute too late to escort him to meetings cringe and shrink. It was a part of him he didn’t like, to be perfectly honest. He didn’t like that his position had allowed him to flex the worst muscles he had. But he also did.

He wasn’t fazed, this drunk man on the couch. He seemed to hold as much regard for Patrick as he did for himself; he looked at him like Patrick was some kind of familiar thing. Like he was surprised to see something like him in the town. He recognized the man’s hoodie – a Bianca Chandon. He’d once bought Rachel something from the same designer when he got his first decent paycheck.

“You don’t look like a Patrick,” the man amended, as if that were supposed to help.

Patrick almost asked, “Well, what do I look like?”, but then a huge, heavy swell of exhaustion came up to meet him from the ground, not stopping until he was steeped up to the eyeballs in it. He stifled a yawn behind his fist as he took the key from Stevie’s outstretched hand, dangling it towards him between the very tip of her thumb and forefinger like it was dirty.

“I hope you enjoy your stay at the Schitt’s Creek Motel,” he heard the man singsong as Patrick ducked back out of the reception, his voice overly saccharine.

“Shut up, David!”

 _David._ Patrick would try and remember that one. He wished he knew why he wanted to.

* * *

“Stevie, I’m _telling_ you it’s the same person.”

“It’s not!”

“It _is!”_

Twenty minutes ago, David had come back into the motel reception, and thrust his phone in Stevie’s face. As soon as he had got home last night, he’d fished the Gossip Room Weekly email out of Trash and read it over and over, reconciling the name and the story with the man he had just seen. He was leaning over the front desk now, running the story past Stevie again and again, trying to convince her of what he _knew_ was right. He just knew it.

“Look. A soaked man turns up at the door in one of the newest Armani suits I have seen in the past couple of months. And believe me, I keep tabs.”

“Oh, for your replicas?” Stevie accompanied the word replicas with two fingers stuck in the air, drawing invisible quotes around the word. David glared at her for a moment before he continued.

“Okay, so this man introduces himself as P. Brewer, the same way the –” he pushed the phone into her face even further, moving from the email to Patrick’s small Wikipedia page – “recently disgraced investment banker does! Why on earth would he be here, dressed like that, using that pseudonym, if not to, I don’t know, run away from whatever the hell happened to make him lose a _billion_ dollars?”

Stevie held a palm out in surrender. “Okay, you want to catch your breath before you keep going? You done yet?”

“Does that mean you believe me?”

Stevie rolled her eyes. “Fine. Fine, I believe you now.” Then she put a hand on David’s wrist, her eyes widening. “Oh my God. What if he did something really bad? What if _he_ was the one who scammed everyone?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” David said. “Look at the email again. He was the one left broke.” David pulled back, closing the tabs on his phone and shoving it into his pocket. “Should we, um…”

He jerked a thumb towards the door with a conspiratorial wink. Stevie shrugged and bobbled her head in clear misunderstanding until David sighed.

“Ugh, should we go check on him!”

“Why? He’s a big boy, he can handle himself.” Then Stevie’s expression turned. “Unless you’re – oh, you’re not planning on sleeping with him, are you?”

“Uh – no! No. It’s nothing to do with his suit.”

“Who said anything about a suit?”

“You did! I mean, _I_ did. But now that you mention it, I’m not gonna deny that he looked…more than acceptable in his suit.”

“Get to the point, David.”

“I just wanted to _check_ on him!” David cried, his hands coming up to flail at his face. “Ugh!”

“Right, well if you’re going to, then I’m coming as well.”

David and Stevie raced to the door, pushing each other through the gap when it opened. It was much sunnier today but the grass was still dewy, and droplets of rain were still shaking off the gutter. A few more dripped down onto David’s head as he and Stevie closed the door.

And just like that, P. Brewer himself was standing there, having closed his own door just seconds before. The three froze, and the look on Patrick’s face was almost like he had been caught on a walk of shame.

“Uh…” Stevie faltered, her hands coming to rest awkwardly on her hips. “Is everything okay?”

To their surprise, Patrick directed his attention towards David. He had a peculiar look on his face, like he was about to say something he would regret.

“Are you, um, are you the cleaning guy?”

_Well._

Stevie scoffed loudly and clapped her hands over her mouth as David’s expression darkened.

“Ex _cuse_ me?”

Patrick withdrew a little and his mouth dropped into an apologetic ‘O’.

“Oh – no, no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have – assumed. Sorry.”

The silence between the three of them stretched out for what felt like hours.

“But, uh…” Patrick started again, “now that I mention it, do you know where I could find a cleaning person around here?”

Stevie was cackling behind her hands now, and though the sound was muffled it was still very much clear that she was enjoying this encounter thoroughly. She shook her head as calmly as she could.

“Nope, no cleaning person,” she mumbled. David heard her whimper behind her hands, and he knew it was because Patrick’s face had dropped into a look of unguarded disgust.

“Right. Because I need a towel, and –”

“Stevie, get the man a towel,” David said. He was much better at not letting on that he was enjoying this almost as much as her. The only thing stopping him from completely losing it was the kernel of pity for the man that was lodged deep inside him, sitting somewhere just above his stomach. He remembered asking a similar question on his own first night here and was received with a harsh, grating chuckle from the grizzled old woman behind the desk, the ash from the end of the cigarette between her thin lips landing on David’s shoes as she leered over him.

“That’s my great aunt,” Stevie had said when he’d emerged from the reception, trying not to cry with frustration. It was the first thing she’d ever said to him. She was sat on the fence to the left of the motel, her short hair bobbing as she jumped off to shake his hand. “Don’t worry about her. If you ignore her, she’ll ignore you.”

Stevie ran away, the door behind her cutting off her loud, snorting laugh. David and Patrick were stood opposite silently, looking everywhere but at each other. When Patrick finally settled on a spot on the ground, twitching his toes inside their classic Tom Fords, David examined him more closely. The unlaced, expensive shoes he was wearing – around $1,500, if David’s discerning eye had not started to fail him – didn’t at all match the T shirt and sweatpants he was wearing. And there was something of a contradiction between the red pillow print on his cheek and his bloodshot eyes, as though he’d been laid down all night with his eyes wide open. He was a mess.

Stevie returned, thrust the towel into Patrick’s hands, and then hurried off again, pressing her phone into David’s hands as she went.

“Text from Jake,” she said. “Look.”

David adjusted his eyes to the screen. “Tailgate tonight, outside Mutt’s barn,” he read aloud. “I’ll be around if you and Stevie want to – ew, what is that? An eggplant and a whiskey emoji? Can he not catch a clue?”

“Whatever, I’m going,” Stevie said. “Anything that happens with Jake can be decided without any prior notice.”

They both looked at Patrick again, who was darting his eyes in time with the interaction like he was watching a tennis match.

Stevie narrowed her eyes at him. “If you’re, um…sticking around for a while, you wouldn’t want to come along, would you?”

Patrick looked caught, and a little uncomfortable. David had seen how his face changed when Stevie said ‘sticking around for a while’.

“No,” he muttered. “I should – should probably – go now.”

And very quickly gone he was, back into his room.

****

_“Are you the cleaning guy?”_

Patrick mimicked his own voice, then thunked his head on the motel room door. “Idiot. You’re an idiot. You are _such_ an idiot.”

He took three deep breaths through his nose, fighting the feeling that he might crumble apart after each one, and held tighter to the towel in his hands. It reminded him he was in desperate need of a shower. Last night, he’d shed his clothes and curled up in bed wearing an old T shirt that he hadn’t touched in years but had for some reason taken with him when he was forced to pack his bags.

As he padded into the bathroom he dreamed about the gorgeous spray of water that used to heat up as soon as he switched it on. He hadn't had a shower since the day before he left. Instinctively, he stood right under the nozzle as he switched the shower on and yelled in surprise at the ice cold spurt of water that came out and splashed his chest, leaving gooseflesh and pebbled nipples in its wake. For some reason, it made him feel like crying. It wasn’t even the water that made him so upset. It was the things he would have to get used to, the things he was leaving behind. The water got warmer, but never as warm as his personalised AquaSymphony waterfall shower at home, whose settings knew him better than he knew himself sometimes. Even the stray tears that had started to make tracks on his face were hotter than it.

When he got out, wincing at the slight sliminess of the tiles, he dried himself off. It was like drying himself on toasted rye bread. He wondered how old the towel was.

His suit from yesterday was hanging all wrong on the radiator. He picked up the jacket and inspected it. It was much too creased to repurpose for today, so he dug into the bottom of his suitcase and pulled out a soft cashmere sweater and some pressed pants.

On the bedside table, his phone had charged and was now blowing up with texts, missed calls and email notifications. He edged near it like it was a bomb and picked it up gingerly, his stomach already rolling at the slew of names on the screen.

 **Mom [Yesterday, 10:45]:** _I got your texts and I’ve just seen the news. Please tell me you’re okay, Patrick._

 **Dad [Today, 00:03]:** _Mom and I are off to bed. Will you call us in the morning?_

 **Rachel [Today, 04:13]:** _I heard what happened. That really sucks. Text me when you have the chance. I miss you_

 **Olly T – Oakridge CEO [Today, 06:45]:** _I’m absolutely shitting myself. I don’t have enough money to maintain the houses anymore. My bank has been stripped. What’s happened to you? Where did you go?_

 **Unknown Number [Today, 08:42]:** _Don’t ask how I got your number. You probably deserved it, whoever you are. EAT THE RICH._

 **Unknown Number [Today, 08:43]:** _Serves you right, Wall Street bastard. EAT THE RICH_

Patrick sighed, deleting the last three texts. He shot a quick message to Rachel and made a perfunctory call to his parents, letting them know he was safe, and then switched his phone back off. It didn’t feel as freeing as he expected it to. But of course, he wasn’t at all in control of the situation here. He thought he was when he ran away, but with every yard he drove away from New York, he was being forced out. It was up to him to take the reins now and he had no idea what to do.

He stood for a moment, hands in his pockets, his still-wet hair cooling on his head. He hadn’t brought any books. He thought back to Stevie’s half-baked offer that morning. He hadn’t been to a tailgate party since he was in high school, and even then it was a pretty aw-shucks affair. Moms serving their grandmother’s chilli recipe out of the backs of red SUVs and cousins playing catch on the lawn. He had a feeling this would be much different.

He put his room key in his back pocket and went outside, thankful to feel a bit of sun on his face rather than the downpour of yesterday. He was twiddling his thumbs as he approached the reception door, knowing it would be Stevie behind the desk but still nursing an absurd half-hope that it would be David.

She lifted her head immediately as he came in. He could tell she was fighting hard against an entertained, indulgent smile, and he was already tired of the conversation before it had begun.

“Stevie, right?” he said, to double-check.

She nodded once. “That is correct.”

“Just to follow up on that invitation this morning…I think I will come along. Y’know, for something to do.”

Stevie looked surprised. “O-oh. Wow, I really wasn’t expecting you to say yes.”

“Do I need to bring anything?” His mind was flashing with Poggio di Sotto wine and rich wheels of Alpha Tolman cheese. Patrick guessed Stevie’s was too, because she snorted.

“No,” she said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Except maybe some thicker shoes. And a high tolerance.”

“A high tolerance for what?”

* * *

Alcohol. Remarkable amounts of cheap, filthy alcohol.

David had learned long ago that that was the answer to a lot of questions around here, but especially at these parties. He cringed at them, and he loved them, then he cringed some more, then he drank until he had forgotten what letter the word cringe started with, and the whole cycle would start again on the second Saturday of next month when Jake and Mutt would tag-team it once again to host the craziest, dirtiest night the town had ever seen. Until the month after that rolled around, and then _that_ one became the craziest, dirtiest night the town had ever seen.

But tonight, his plans to get absolutely shitfaced were scuppered by the man who was wandering around the parked cars slowly like a frightened gazelle. David watched as someone’s motorbike roared and zipped past him and he flung himself to the side, catching his balance on the side of a mucky truck, and then cringing at the mess on his hand.

David could only watch it for so long before he couldn’t take it anymore. As much as he enjoyed a good laugh at the misfortune of others, it was only ever with Stevie by his side that he liked it. There was too much of _him_ there, and he couldn’t bear to see it. It was resurfacing feelings in him that Stevie could never understand.

He squeezed himself between two black trucks and stopped near Patrick, who was still preoccupied trying to get the mud off his hands.

“I don’t know why you were so reluctant to show up here. You fit right in.”

David stopped himself in his own tracks, hesitant to go any further. He knew his mouth had been estranged from his brain for as long has he had been able to speak, but he wasn’t expecting to say something so stupidly insensitive.

The reaction was…not quite as expected. Patrick laughed. Albeit a little hysterically; it was a self-deprecating thing that both put David at ease and set him on edge at the same time. David inched closer and leaned on the truck.

“What happened to the Armani?” David said, gesturing at Patrick’s sweater. “I like a bit of Stone Island too on the right occasion, but I’m worried you’ll be a bit underdressed for this high-brow establishment.”

This time when Patrick laughed at him, his eyes sparkled and a little of the discomfort between them edged away.

“You, uh…you know clothes.” Patrick winced. “That came out weird. You know what I mean, though.”

David rolled his shoulders back and exhaled. “Yes, I know what you mean.” Then he remembered the left pocket of his baggy sweatpants, and what he filled it up with at every tailgate party. He pulled down the silver zipper and fished out the three mini bottles of gin that he’d brought for himself, Stevie and Twyla, but he now figured Patrick would need them more than the girls did. “Here. A peace offering, if you will.”

“Shouldn’t I be the one giving _you_ the peace offering for calling you the cleaning guy?” Patrick smirked, edging forward to take a bottle of the gin from David’s hands.

“Just take it, Patrick –”

“David! Patrick!”

It was Stevie. David could tell her voice was already loosened by alcohol, which meant she probably had a stupid idea about to follow in three, two, one –

“Bring the new guy over here! We need him.”

Patrick froze up again, and David felt like he could see the walls going back up. “I’m not ‘the new guy’,” he muttered, more to himself.

“What do you want, Stevie?” David called without turning around.

“Initiation,” she said simply.

David gasped. His prior empathy dissipated in an instant. Oh, this was gonna be good.

He’d had to endure his own version of this when he was 18. Stevie had coerced him into shoving a dirty tube into his mouth and ingesting a veritable shitmix of cheap beer, vodka and blue VK until he was sick. He’d hated every second of it, but he would never forget the way he felt when they’d all cheered for him. And if Patrick was anything like David, then he would feel the same.

“I –”

“Come on, this’ll be good for you,” David said, walking away and gesturing for Patrick to follow. “Get you into the spirit of things.”

Stevie grinned widely when they approached, cracking open several foamy cans and pouring them all into a double-sided measuring jug. David threw her one of the gins and she poured that in, too.

“Here. Put your thumb over the tube. You don’t need to bend down, because you’re short,” she said.

David heard Patrick grumble something that sounded like 5’10.

“Eh, let’s say 5’9 and a half,” David said as Patrick brought the tube to his mouth and Stevie lifted the jug, high and merciless.

As it turned out, Patrick was absolutely nothing like David. David had protested _before_ the initiation, not afterwards. David had laughed about it _afterwards,_ not before he was instructed to put his thumb to the tube. And as soon as Patrick extracted himself from the plastic, coughing and spluttering but with enough energy left to shoot David a death glare, David knew he’d made the wrong decision. He wished he could stop everyone’s clapping and jeering.

“Patrick, I –”

“I’m not a _circus animal,_ David.” Patrick pushed past him forcefully, rubbing the remnants of alcohol off his chin as he walked away.

There was a chorus of crescendoed ‘oohs’ as Patrick put more and more distance between himself and the crowd, as though they were expecting him to turn back around and join in again. When he didn’t, within a minute everyone had lost interest and they were focusing on their next victim – a 21-year-old who had recently moved here from Elmdale – but David was still looking. He pulled his cardigan over his hands and crossed his arms. Suddenly, he had no urge to get drunk tonight.

* * *

Patrick managed to make it back to his motel room without submitting to the sickly, empty gurgling of his stomach. He booked it for the toilet immediately, but was both relieved and slightly disappointed when nothing came out. As a precaution he kept himself bent over the toilet for a few more minutes, but then gave up. He poured himself a tall glass of water and drank it in one go.

He perched on the edge of his bed, taking off his pants but keeping the sweater on. He remembered the tiny tug of David’s fingers as he had looked it over and proclaimed it a Stone Island piece. But even David hadn’t ended up being who he thought he was. He would have been all up for sitting with David and splitting the bottles of gin as they talked trash about the scene around them, but he’d just been the same as –

_Patrick, what the fuck is wrong with you?_

He laughed at himself, incredulous and ashamed. How could he be so snobby? Making assumptions about David based on his clothing, deciding he was the only person there worth his time, then ducking out of the scene as soon as he showed a little something different. It wasn't him. At least, he thought it wasn't him. More often than not nowadays he was inadvertently judging his actions against how a younger Patrick would have reacted to them. The Patrick he was before he moved to New York. A Patrick who had never woken up the morning after he made the riskiest trade in his life in 2014 to the overwhelming news that he was a multi-millionaire and well on his way to greater things. And now, he had none of it. And the worst part of all was that deep down, in the dark, endless pits of him, Patrick knew that, money or no money, he would still have gone through life feeling just as miserable, just as lost, just as... _wrong._

He couldn’t get the TV to work and there was nothing on his phone except more random hackers and Twitter mentions, so he just sat. And sat.

Until there was a rustle under the door.

Patrick jumped, taking in the tall, slightly cowering silhouette behind the door. It bent down, and Patrick watched a takeout menu slide inch by inch under the gap. The shadow lifted its hand, looked as though it wanted to knock, then left quickly.

Patrick stared at the menu for a moment before picking it up, scanning down the bad graphics and ridiculously cheap prices. There was a note scrawled in Sharpie on the back.

_The 11-inch Marinara is my go-to for hangovers._

_\- The cleaning guy_

_P.S. Sorry._

Patrick didn’t want to smile. He wanted to be mad. He wanted to believe that everyone here was too different to him to reason with, too different to bother talking to.

But he did. He smiled, and he punched the takeout number into the old motel phone.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Here is the link to the playlist I've made for this fic, to listen as you read (if you like): [LCGD Playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5NuFs2boYbOWsJdBVR7cQN?si=QKc0Q-FYTAetyQ5LMeGL3A)

**12:07 PM**

**Now Playing: Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Divison**

**⏮** **️** **⏸** **️** **⏩**

**Swipe to unlock screen**

David might have missed it if he hadn’t looked up from his phone, awaiting Stevie’s arrival after she texted him to say she was coming in to distract him at work.

Even if he hadn’t looked up, he would have seen it eventually. Thanks to visual marketing strategies developed around extensive research into the human psyche, a huge, red, ‘CLEARANCE’ banner on the inside of a store window was difficult to miss. It was designed to be difficult to miss.

As his co-worker, Wendy, slapped the last curl of adhesive sticker over the glass, smoothing her hand over the bumps, David took out an earbud and cleared his throat from behind the counter.

“Um, can you explain to me what this is?”

Wendy pointed at the translucent white backing of the banner. “Clearance,” she said simply.

David rolled his eyes. Wendy was a woman of many words, scatty and loud and garrulous, except when she wasn’t. Either iteration of her annoyed him. “I can see that,” he said irritably. “I mean, how come this is happening without me being informed?”

Wendy gestured at the sign again, only this time her usual demeanor returned. “How’s that for being informed? You can see the sign from here! Believe me, I was surprised as well, but lemme tell you, I’m going to be glad to see the back of this place. You know, my Brad’s been trying to get away for ages, says he’s sick of those kids in their trailer burning cans and making a ruckus on our lawn, so he says to me, he says –”

“Wendy, am I going to lose my job or not?” David cut in.

She blinked at him. “I mean, I thought that much was obvious.”

David did a double take, dropping his phone on the counter. He’d heard rumor, but he had no idea it was happening so soon. “Wha – when? So, no meeting? No two-week notice or whatever it is? That’s it?”

Wendy shrugged. “Not sure what more I can tell you, David. Just like when I lost the Blouse Barn, my hands are tied.” Then she gasped. “Maybe now I can dedicate all my time to my new cosmetics venture! How’s BAC Cosmetics for a name? B for Brad my fiancé, A for his dear friend Antonio, and C for cosmetics!”

David stared at her. “I literally don’t know what to say to you anymore, Wendy.”

Wendy’s phone rang and she went into the breakroom, ignoring David and chatting animatedly about the cosmetics business that David didn’t have the heart to tell her would immediately get sued by MAC. David looked back down to his phone, sinking his cheek onto the heel of his hand, when the bell above the door rang out.

“It’s confirmed, Stevie, I’m gonna be sponging off you for gas money and living with my parents for the rest of my life,” David said without looking up.

“I mean, I don’t know the situation, but that sounds a little extreme.”

David’s hand gave way under him. His chin would have hit the counter with force if he hadn’t clattered out of his seat and ended up on the floor. He wasn’t sure which one was worse, a broken jaw or the last shred of dignity that he didn’t know he had being crushed by his ass on the cold linoleum floor.

When he finally forced himself up, grunting in pain, Patrick Brewer was stood there, an eyebrow raised in amusement.

“Before you ask,” David said, brushing his pants off and gesturing around the store, “we don’t sell any charcoal toothpaste or Vertu chargers.”

Patrick looked surprised. “You know Vertu just collapsed, right?”

“Um, no? It was just the first rich person thing to come to mind, so…”

Patrick snorted, but his eyes were mirthless. David could tell the words had landed a bit uncomfortably. He had a habit of that, even now. He could always see the things he’s said as soon as they’d come out, sticking in people’s sides like thin shards, like sand in the eyes.

“I mean – not rich person thing. They just – I remember when _I_ was…and all the girls in my class had these trashy little gold phones that cost like 17k a pop, and…yeah.”

David trailed off, pointing to the back room and mumbling about needing to do a stock check (entirely contradictory to the giant Clearance banners), when Patrick cleared his throat.

“I just wanted to clear the air after the other night and, uh, thank you for the – for the menu.” He said ‘menu’ like it was something pathetic, like something he was getting used to being thankful for. David was struck by a sudden curiosity about the last time Patrick had truly felt grateful.

Instead of saying any of that, or even acknowledging what Patrick had said, David asked, “How did you know where I worked, anyway?”

Patrick shrugged. “The girl at the desk told me.”

“Stevie,” David said, a little defensively. Stevie was, indeed, a girl at the desk, but it was also the last thing she was.

“Yeah. I asked her where you were and she started laughing, saying she wasn’t going to come now.”

David sighed irritably. “Great. So now one of my last shifts is going to be as miserable as the rest.”

Patrick looked around at the barren shelves and banners. “So what’s happening here? It’s gone bankrupt or something?”

“I wouldn’t quite say bankrupt, but yes. Schitt’s Creek is officially one of those towns without a general store.”

“Eh, you could always get things online, you know.”

David stared at him. “You don’t get it.”

Patrick steamed ahead, oblivious. “You know, I always heard that when it comes to places like this, you’ve just gotta let some aspects of them go when they run their course –”

“You don’t _get it,_ Patrick,” David snapped.

Patrick’s mouth snapped shut. David could see the genuine confusion still seated deep behind his eyes, and it irritated him. He truly didn’t get it. He didn’t get what it meant for Schitt’s Creek to lose a place that meant people would be coming into town less, meant they would have less of a dependency on the place around them, meant that, eventually, the other stores and the Café and the post office and everything in between would all feel the loss as well.

David got himself as comfortable as he could on his stool again. “If you’re not gonna buy anything, and you’ve thanked me for everything you want to thank me for, then I think we’re done here,” he said icily.

“Actually, I was going to ask you to grab dinner tonight.”

David stared at Patrick for a long beat. “O-oh. That’s not what I was expecting you to say.”

Patrick grinned sheepishly, a hand coming to scratch the back of his neck, and it was the humblest David had seen him so far. It suited him.

“Oh! Did you think I was gonna thank you for the menu again?” he said.

David narrowed his eyes, and something unexpectedly giddy and fond opened like a well in his chest. They were just playing with each other now, embracing their frequent miscommunications and bad starts. What was one more barb on the wire?

“You’re either very impatient or extremely sure of yourself,” David quipped, and couldn’t bite back his smirk at Patrick’s laughter. He pushed it into his cheek, as he always did, and was surprised to realize that three smirks from things Patrick had said over the past twenty-four hours lived there now. That was more territory than anyone had ever had over the muscles in his face. David Rose did not smile. Not when he could help it. And with Patrick, he really couldn’t.

“So, the Café Tropical, then?” Patrick said. “Eight o’clock?”

“I get off at nine.”

“Nine, then.”

Well.

 _That_ took a turn.

He said it like an order. Like he expected David to be there. David watched him, dumbfounded, until he was all the way out the door and out of eyeshot down the street.

* * *

Back at the motel, Patrick went into the reception to ask for a fresh pillowcase – he’d come back to find that the one on his pillow had taken on the cold and was damp and peppered with spores – but the front desk was empty. Patrick rapped his knuckles on the desk a few times before he notices Stevie’s phone, open on the desk. She must have left recently, since the screen hadn’t gone to sleep yet. He wouldn’t have looked over if it weren’t for David’s name on the screen catching his eye:

Checking quickly to see if Stevie was approaching, Patrick leaned over the desk and tilted the screen over a little. He could see half a blue message and David’s small white one:

_**Stevie:** She's more important right now. You don’t owe him anything tbh. What are you going to do?_

_**David:** I literally don’t know_

Before he could scroll up to see the rest of the text chain, the screen went black.

“Can I help you?”

Patrick leapt backwards from the desk, stuffing his hand in his pocket. Stevie was hovering on the steps, a pile of towels in her arms, eyeing Patrick suspiciously. She dropped the towels onto the side of the desk and snatched her phone away.

“Sorry. I – yeah, I need a new pillowcase.”

Without saying anything, Stevie plucked a case off the top of the pile of laundry and held it out to him. He muttered in thanks and backed out of the room, not missing Stevie’s narrowed eyes and her fast typing as he left.

The afternoon came and went in a liminal blur of crappy daytime TV and more depressive periods than were probably normal for a nine-hour period. Patrick shot up from where he was sat propped upon the bed at half eight, clambering into the shower and pulling a suit from his case. While he was still drying off, he uncapped the bottle of Creed that he’d stuffed into a pair of socks before he was evicted and sprayed it over his neck and torso.

He was ready and pressed in a sharp navy blazer and crisp white shirt in a record ten minutes after he’d shot up from the bed. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, barely fogged by the lukewarm water, feeling a little ridiculous. He wasn’t sure why he was so keen to get out the door, nor why he’d dressed the way he did. For a second, he genuinely wondered if the Café had a dinner jacket policy, then remembered the glimpse he’d had of it as he went to the general store that afternoon and quickly did away with that idea.

Why was he so bothered? And what was all this supposedly for, anyway? To thank David for slipping a damn menu under his door?

 _Or do you just want to show off again, as usual?_ a poisonous little voice spat in his head. Patrick burned up with embarrassment at the thought of it. The people he’d met in this town so far must think him some sort of city slicker freak, posturing around the place and flinching round every corner.

“The cleaning guy. Girl at the desk,” Patrick muttered, mimicking himself yet again. “You need to get a grip. This isn’t who you are.”

He looked down at his watch, which now read ten to nine. And he had told David to be at the Café at nine, so he had no doubt that David would be there. Patrick grabbed his coat and hurried out the door as quickly as he could.

It was getting darker more quickly now, so Patrick hurried the last few steps into the Café Tropical and shook off the cold as soon as he was inside. He ducked his head, squinting, when he crossed the threshold. The lights were dim yet blinding at the same time, so yellow and uncomfortable that Patrick could almost feel them burning the cologne on his skin. Some of the clientele turned to him as he came through the door, but lost interest a second later and turned back to their meals. After adjusting his eyes to the indoors, Patrick looked around and slipped himself into a free booth.

It was something he used to do when meeting with clients over dinner. No matter if they were there or not, Patrick would slide down casually into a seat and, when their eyes landed on him, he would act surprised as though he’d been there the whole time. The key was to look like you were at ease, and had a few more important things to think about than whatever deal you were discussing over the table. Why he thought it would apply to this Podunk café with gaudy plastic palm trees on the counter and something called “Luau Smoothie & a Half” on the chalkboard menu, he had no idea. Old habits die hard.

He scanned the breakfast bar and all the individual tables as the waitress came over, smiling brightly at Patrick.

“Hi! I don’t think I’ve seen you here before. Welcome to Café Tropical!”

Patrick smiled back at her, feeling his eyebrows raise as she handed him a large piece of laminated plastic. “Uh –”

“Just let me know when you’re ready to order!”

Looking more closely, Patrick saw a more long-winded version of the menu on the wall, complete with all the specials of the week and a side that was inexplicably translated into German. Patrick divided his attention between the menu, his watch and the café, where David had still not made an appearance. It’s not like he had his number. Why would he? And speaking of, why would he invite a random guy he’d known for less than two days out to dinner?

_His eyes. That smirk. The sass._

“Yes, alright,” he said loudly to the voice in his head, which was unhelpfully providing images of David on a constant reel-to-reel.

Suddenly, the waitress came barrelling back over, pen and notepad in hand. “Did you say alright? You’re ready to order?”

Not wanting to be awkward, Patrick just nodded. “Yup. Yeah. Um. I’ll have the soup of the…year? Please. Twyla,” he added, reading her name badge.

“Perfect. Although we just used the last bowl to cover a spider up in the kitchen, do you mind if it’s in a smoothie cup?”

Patrick gritted his teeth and dug his nails into his knee below the table. If it hurt, then he was definitely here and not trapped in some oddcore, Coraline-esque parallel world. It did hurt. He was here, and he was about to drink soup from a straw.

He forced another smile as Twyla took his menu away. “That’s fine. Thanks.”

David still didn’t show. He had half a mind to lean across the table to ask the stocky, short-haired woman to his right if she knew him or where he would be, but there was something about her that made Patrick think that she wouldn’t take kindly to him. When his soup arrived in its plastic cup, Patrick felt utterly ridiculous sucking it up through the straw, but no one seemed to be looking at him. No one was paying him the slightest bit of attention. And though this place was weird as all hell, that was exactly how he liked things.

But the soup was soon gone, and David still didn’t show.

Patrick fought through waves of restlessness and anxiety that battled each other in turn before he did something he hadn’t done since he moved to New York: resign himself. He resigned himself to the fact that he’d been stood up, and for what? What could David have had to do in this town that was possibly more important?

After a very awkward conversation with Twyla about his card declining and cringing his way through a thank you when she offered to pay for his meal, Patrick cleared out of the Café as hurriedly as he had arrived.

The sky was dark outside, but not quite pitch black just yet. Streaks of inky purple were still hanging low on the horizon, like someone had spilled a blue pen over the edge of the sky, and the finest, faintest light of the sun was still inching away in retreat, enough to give Patrick cause to take a longer walk back to the motel. He passed by tall golden wheat fields, which he was sure were beautiful in the sunshine, and a trailer park where a group of teenagers were blasting _All Eyes On Us_ and drinking beer _._ Patrick’s stomach fluttered with nostalgia for his own hometown. Between the snatches he’d heard in the car, from the radio in the reception and people like those teens in the street, Patrick hadn’t heard this much country music since he’d lived in Canada himself. It was…nice? Was that the word? What was certain was that he could feel the pressure of New York falling off behind him, the ball and chain getting shorter one link at a time.

He thought about passing by reception completely and signing the day off as a job badly done, but curiosity got the better of him and he opened the door once again. Stevie was checking a couple into the room, and looked up when they were gone.

“I know what you’re going to ask,” Stevie said, “and no, I haven’t heard from David since he left.”

“But do you know where he is?” Patrick said quickly. He would have been embarrassed by his enthusiasm, but he thought about the texts David and Stevie had been exchanging and wagered that he was likely to get an answer.

“Something came up with Alexis. That’s his sister,” Stevie explained. “She’s probably gotten herself into some kind of pickle halfway up the county.”

Patrick frowned. “Is that it?” he said, too quickly.

Stevie looked at him oddly. “What?”

He tried to will down the pettiness starting to form a pit in his stomach, but it was no good.

“I asked him first,” he said petulantly, immediately shrivelling under the amusement and scorn on Stevie’s face.

“First of all,” she said, leaning forward, “when it comes to Alexis, there is no asking involved. Secondly, maybe you should have asked him nicely instead of all but instructing him to go.”

Patrick blinked. He tried hard to remember what it was he’d said. _I was going to ask you to grab dinner. Nine, then_.

There was another thing he’d have to mimic in his own voice later on, fighting his way through the mortification of yet another failed start with David. Where the hell was he going wrong? He could feel his eyes stinging. And honestly, the dinner was the very last thing on his mind as he tried not to cry. It was everything that had gone on in the past couple of days. He had no idea what the fuck he was doing. He just felt ripped. Broken. Wrong.

“Okay. I’ll keep it in mind. I…bye.”

Patrick tapped the counter once and offered Stevie what he hoped looked like an apologetic smile, but was probably more of a grimace with tears behind it. When he closed the door behind him in his room, the tears started to fall, unbidden. He hadn't properly cried in a long time. He didn’t cry when he’d gone home for Christmas two years ago and left early after an argument with his mom about how much he’d changed. He didn’t cry when Rachel had stood in front of him, their Viadurini dining table between them in their six-mil flat, and asked him what more he could possibly want. He didn’t cry when he couldn’t give her an answer.

He and Rachel had sent a couple more texts back and forth since he’d got here. She told him about her small new apartment back home, about the dates she’d been on. About how she was happy. And he was happy for her, genuinely; she was his best friend, after all, and he didn’t want to deny her anything after he’d robbed her of those years by swinging her round in circles in New York and spinning her up in the web he’d wound around himself like a protective shield. Breaking up with her, getting back together, both of them making the mistake of equating fancy gifts and posh dinners to happiness before they realized that there was far too much that money couldn’t buy.

After getting changed for bed, Patrick laid down in the sheets and switched on the TV. His phone was sat beside him. Some women on the TV show he’d landed on were chirping about social media, and it gave him an idea. He opened Instagram and typed Schitt’s Creek into the location bar. There were pictures of fields, men with fish, some terrible tattoos, and then...

The most recent one on the page, from an account called alexisroseofficial. He tapped on it, enlarging the photo:

_**alexisroseofficial:** sorry for forcing u out of work to save me from hillbillies with knives in Elm Grove....i can win u back with pizza tho <3_

Well. That explained things.

Patrick sat back, determined with everything he had not to lose yet another few hours to feeling like an idiot. He took a long, slow drink of water then a deep breath.

He’d talked to David as though he expected him to listen to him without complaint. And why? Why should David care about who he is?

People had _lives_ here, he reminded himself. People had things to do. And just because they weren’t the kinds of things he was used to caring about, to seeing any value in, that didn’t make them any less important.

Patrick switched off the light, settled himself back into the pillows and thought about where he was going to go from here. For the first time in three years, he didn’t have to work himself into a hole to avoid all the things that made him feel like he was going insane. He didn’t have to grit his teeth and treat business rivals like they were rungs on ladders to get where he wanted to go.

On the patterned, paper-paste ceiling of the motel, lit soft and white by the moon, Patrick envisioned the old scraps of his career, from the contracts to the emails to the cheques that marked his ever-growing wealth. An upwards trajectory of success. Slowly, he started to realise that what he thought was up, up, up was really away, away, away. Running away from everything that scared him. Giving himself a job where he didn’t have to act like a person at all, in the hopes that one day he might just stop being one altogether.

Cold tears built up in his eyes and tracked down the side of his face, landing in his ears. He didn’t stop them. _Wash it off,_ he told them. _Wash me clean of it all._

Tomorrow, he would get up and find some work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments do a happy writer make.
> 
> \- Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://fairmanor.tumblr.com/), if you so desire.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- I know this is a day late! Life has been hectic recently. And I wish I could relax in a little town and drink terrible pumpkin spiced lattes too, but for the time being I'll just have to write about it.

“Okay, so correct me if I’m hearing this wrong. You’re suggesting that you engrave one of the rings with the love note as requested, then engrave your…phone number? Into the other one?”

“And my initials!” came the cheery, oblivious voice from the other side of the door. “It’s a complimentary service I offer with every ring engraving. Wait, before you leave, gentlemen, can I interest you in making thousands of dollars per week from home with your very own – oh, goodbye! See you later!”

Patrick jumped out of the way of the door, stepping backwards to lean casually on the billboard stuck in the grass outside the address of the business that Stevie had given him that morning. He’d gone to the desk, asking for advice on where to look for a job through gritted teeth, and was surprised when she’d been receptive and given him a couple of business cards. She looked almost…proud? Was that the word? It was funny. She hadn’t known him for very long, yet she was proud of him for being proactive.

He watched as two very confused and disgruntled looking men came out of the door, clearly complaining about whoever was inside. Patrick leaned a bit harder on the board and jumped when it gave way, then when the men were out of sight he made his way towards the door, stopping at the last moment to sift through the business cards in his hands.

_Ray Butani Photography_

_R.B. Business Consultation_

_Racks by Ray_

_Ray of Sunshine – Weather Prediction App_

_Ray’s Rings_

Patrick had seen a lot of business cards in the past couple of years. Holographic ones, ones coated in actual gold leaf, ones that said more about the things they could afford than the service their owner provided. He sometimes came home from parties to find them tucked stealthily onto random parts of his person, slipped there by investors and big business fatcats who could be distinguished from common pickpockets only by their pinstriped suits and the crystal champagne flutes gripped in their blunt fingers.

He’d never seen any so simple, so earnest, in a long time. As he turned the door handle and came into the front room, he felt a strange pang of gratefulness for this man. It was a reminder that there were still small, bright things in the world, things that his old work colleagues thought they had control over. They didn’t. They really, really didn’t.

Time to slot himself back into that world.

The man – Ray, he assumed – looked up from his screen when Patrick came in and smiled at him, though he looked a little alarmed at the unexpected presence.

“Hello! What can I do for you?” Ray said, his fingers already poised over a dozen different shortcuts to his various endeavours that were lying scattered on his desk. Empty forms, poorly Photoshopped pictures of himself, even _more_ business cards.

“Um, hi,” Patrick started, sticking out his hand nervously. “I was referred here by someone who said you’d be able to find some work for me? My name’s Patrick Brewer.”

Ray squinted at him for a moment, and Patrick could see him mouthing the name silently. Then he pointed at Patrick.

“What – you’re not Patrick Brewer? P. Brewer?”

It was hard not to sigh out loud. Patrick only just realised he was probably talking to a fellow business major here, someone who probably read the Financial Times and kept up to date with all the goings on of the world Patrick had forced himself to love.

“Afraid so,” he said.

And then Ray _laughed._

“Wait – what’s funny?”

Ray didn’t break his smile, but the crinkles in the corners of his eyes smoothed out a bit.

“You mean to tell me you’re actually Patrick Brewer?”

“Didn’t I…just say that?”

“I thought you were playing along with the joke.”

Patrick tried to stop his mouth dropping open, but was only half successful. He snapped it shut again and then opened it properly like an offended fish, only forcing himself to keep it closed when he caught sight of the genuine guilt crossing Ray’s features.

“O-oh.”

Patrick opened his mouth to respond, to and awkwardly tell Ray it was okay, but Ray was already scuttling behind his desk. He sat back down, and Patrick wondered if he’d made everything too awkward to continue, but when Ray looked up it was as though he had forgotten about the whole ordeal already.

“It’s good to meet you, Mr. Brewer. What kind of work are you looking for today?”

Was this man seriously going to just…forget about it?

Patrick looked at him. His eyes were expressive, non-judgemental. Honest. This random man who he had never met before fully acknowledged that he had been laughing about Patrick’s well-publicised downfall, yet wasn’t going to broach the subject any further.

Suddenly, Patrick found his words coming a lot easier. “Something in business,” he said. “It’s kind of what I know. I’m guessing this card is the one I should be referring to…?” He sifted through the cards and held out the one that said _R.B. Business Consultation._ Ray’s face lit up.

“Oh, I’m so relieved! I’ve been looking for a way to let that one go recently. My enterprises seem to be piling up a bit.”

“Yeah, are you sure all this is financially viable?” Patrick said, gesturing at the business cards on the table. As he did, some of them slipped down like an avalanche and scattered across the wood.

“Well…no, but that’s not really my end goal. I just like helping people.”

Huh. Patrick looked down at the card again, imagining that the extra line on Ray’s first initial wasn’t there. _P.B. Business Consultation._ He couldn’t see it yet, not quite, but…he might. Soon.

“You know, I’d be more than happy to take this one off your hands,” Patrick said.

“You’re sure?” Ray looked at his watch. “I have an over-the-phone meeting to go to now, but you’d be alright sorting out all the ins and outs of transferring details and whatnot?”

Child’s play. “That’d be more than fine, Ray,” Patrick said. The politeness of the words sat foreign and oddly heavy on his tongue, and he chased them down with a strange, mingled taste of comfort and guilt.

Ray smiled widely, and Patrick was convinced he’d genuinely forgotten about the slip-up at the beginning. He could be any old Patrick Brewer and he didn’t think this man would mind.

Oh.

That’s – wow.

_He could be any old Patrick Brewer._

_Like…the_ old _Patrick Brewer._

Perhaps not entirely the one he used to be, but. The one who played baseball. The one who made his mom cry with happiness at the birthday cards he made her. The one who was _happy_ to get into Harvard. The one who was happy, period. The one who was proud of his friends when they succeeded, not constantly panicking that people were doing better than him.

He met Ray’s eye again and smiled. And for a moment he thought about the last time the muscles in his face had moved unbidden, the last time the smile wasn’t false. Didn’t hurt. He couldn’t remember.

“I can get started right away,” he said. And Ray nodded, leaving the desk to give Patrick some room.

Compared to his old job, the work sort of felt like simple but tedious manual labor. Though he was only sending emails and printing off fresh forms for himself to fill in, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done so much clicking, or fiddled with the spreadsheets that used to calm him down. He stayed there for about forty-five minutes, setting up what was about to become his business, until the computer screen was brighter than the dim day outside and he got thirsty.

“Ray, would it be okay if I grabbed a glass of water?” Patrick called into the living room. He heard Ray turn down the TV and jump back into the room.

“I can do you one better, Patrick. Do you want to stay for some tea?”

“Tea sounds good, thank you Ray.”

As it turned out, tea sounded _great._ It was exactly what Patrick needed, having been put off of the motel’s complimentary station by the mere look of it. He had also sworn off going to the Café that morning after his embarrassing moment there yesterday, so it had been a while since he’d had a hot drink. The tea calmed him from head to toe, a pleasant warmth settling in his sternum as Ray and the television chattered in each of Patrick’s ears.

“If you don’t mind my asking, how did you end up here? I’m – can I assume the joke is over, and you really are Patrick Brewer?”

Patrick felt himself flush a little and nodded. “Yep. I was kind of hoping no one would know the story when I came here, but you’re the second person so far to recognise me,” he said.

Ray winced sympathetically. “If it makes you feel any better, I only heard about it on Reddit. I won’t tell you which forum it was in, I wouldn’t want you to get offended.”

Not entirely soothed, Patrick sipped his tea and tried to focus on the television. But Ray was asking him have you met Warren Buffett, and what was he like, and never mind you don’t have to answer that, and so where are you living, Patrick, and fuck it, Patrick could do with someone to talk to. Even if this man had the disturbingly neutral optimism of a Skyrim NPC, he had a heart. Patrick could tell that already.

“I’m staying in the motel at the moment,” Patrick said, “and it’s…different. I didn’t have any of the – you know…from birth, so it’s not like I’ve never seen a motel before, but it’s been a while since I’ve had to stay in somewhere like that.”

The word money had caught on his tongue. He couldn’t decide if he’d been about to say money or billions – because by God, was there a difference between just coins and a _billion_ of the goddamned things – but he didn’t have either of them now so it didn’t matter anymore.

“And after that, I’m not sure,” he said. “The few assets I have left probably aren’t going to tide me over for much longer. Unless I sell my car, which I’m not keen on doing.”

“I’m guessing the Bugatti is yours?” Ray said, the slight reverence of a vehicle enthusiast in his voice. For a wild, far-off moment, Patrick considered offering the car to Ray. He had no idea why. Maybe he did want to be rid of the thing.

Ray finished off his tea and sat back, looking at Patrick thoughtfully. “You know, I have been looking for a roommate,” he mused. “I had a lovely young person named Georga living here for a while, but they moved out recently. They liked to eat alone, and unfortunately their favorite eating times coincided with _my_ favorite eating times, so they were after more ‘privacy’, apparently.”

“I already figured a lack of privacy is a given in a house this size.”

It had slipped out unbidden. Patrick tensed up, his mouth half-open in an oncoming apology, but Ray was laughing.

“That’s exactly what I said!” Ray chuckled, completely oblivious to the accidental jab Patrick had just made. He was relieved Ray had chosen to interpret it in a polite way, but he still felt terrible.

“Right, well, if it’s okay with you, I’d like to get settled in as soon as possible,” Patrick said, eager to get away to pack. “I should probably settle up with the motel first, though.”

“Of course, of course!” Ray said, collecting Patrick’s cup and then seeing him to the door. “Can I expect you tonight?”

Patrick thought about the house, and what he had seen so far. The crocheted throws, the country floral teacups that somehow matched the wallpaper even though it would have been entirely illogical to sell them together, the faint smell of roasted onion. It reminded him of his paternal grandmother’s place, the living room he used to sit in and draw pictures when he was in elementary school. And then she passed away and Patrick had suddenly felt like there was something he was going to be missing out on from now on, even if every time he went to her house it had been exactly the same.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll be here tonight.”

Patrick made his way outside, pulling his jacket a bit tighter as he walked. His designer trousers were silky and cold, not made at all for this biting autumn weather that made the distant trees look like they were in black and white. He’d need something, some kind of tether to this town, if he was going to survive the winter months. And he had one now. He had a real house. Nothing like what he had grown to consider worthy of a house, but one where he could start again. Revisit some of those Friday nights after school that had had to stop suddenly.

He would need a good pair of jeans as well, though.

* * *

“Hey, David! What can I get for you?”

As if there was ever going to be any other answer in the second week of September.

“Pumpkin spiced latte please, Twyla,” he said, his camera already open and ready to take a photo. For the past two years, Twyla had been bringing out experimentational seasonal drinks like peppermint hot chocolate during winter, a cocktail tasting night for Purim, nothing at all for Lent. She ordered special auburn coffee cups and wooden stirrers with mini smiling pumpkins on top for this time of year.

Twyla pushed the drink across to him, and David unlidded it and sniffed.

“Thanks, Twy – um. What is this?”

“It’s a pumpkin spiced latte! Only the pumpkin is actually butternut squash, and the spice is _actual_ spice and mixed herbs –”

“When you say actual spice, you’re not referring to –” David mimed smoking a joint with his hand, and Twyla’s eyes widened in horror.

“Oh God, no, I meant chilli powder!” Twyla zoned out for a second. “So that’s what Jimmy used to mean when he said ‘actual spice’…”

David took the cup in his thumb and forefinger, putting his phone back into his pocket. “Thanks,” he forced out.

The weather had started to bite down in the proper way now, a relief after the momentary blizzard at the start of the month. This was how fall was supposed to look, David thought, surveying the fluttering red leaves and the realistic-looking plastic pumpkins that the council had stacked decoratively at the base of the thin trees that were planted into the concrete next to the road. His mom had suggested hanging a 12-foot, hooded, eldritch horror-like thing on the town sign, looming over every car that entered, but every one of her designs had come out looking far too much like her and it had been vetoed with vigour.

David uncapped his drink and took a sip. Not bad for caffeinated soup. A little of it spilled over his fingers with the shock of getting a text. He juggled between the cup and his phone for a minute before finally getting the chance to read:

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _come to motel………rare creature seen making its way out of makeshift habitat_

Rare creature…David filtered the nonsense text through current context and figured Patrick must be checking out.

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _(it’s Patrick)_

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _(checking out)_

 **David:** _yeah I know you idiot I already fucking worked it out_

Within minutes David was back there, only remembering his rejection of Patrick’s plans the night before a few steps before he reached the door. He hadn’t had a chance to explain himself yet. He was flooded with guilt immediately, and hung back for a second to think about whether he actually wanted to go in.

On the one hand, if Patrick was checking out, it wasn’t like he’d ever see him again.

But on the other hand…

If Patrick was checking out, it wasn’t like he’d ever see him again.

David opened the door much faster than he thought he would and strode across to Stevie, turning to stand casually at her side. He looked up to see Patrick staring at him and pretended he’d only just noticed him as well. Or at least, he thought he did. It was hard to act nonchalant when your toque was falling down your face and you’d just splashed another tablespoon’s amount of scalding hot liquid over your hands.

“H-hmmm, yup, hi Patrick,” David said, jerking his head back to fix his hat and failing miserably. Patrick was still staring at him. In fact, he hadn’t taken his eyes off David since he entered. It put what could only be described as a hot chill through him, the kind that coursed through him when he jerked off or when he used to meet with Jake in his twenties. But that kind of chill would always bed itself in his hips. This one was right up in his chest, rising to fill his face with something that felt horribly like a blush. Stevie eyed him then surreptitiously lowered her hand beneath the table.

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _why are you moving your head like that_

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _you look like my dog when it’s about to throw up_

David made surreptitious eye contact with Stevie as Patrick started to fill out a form.

 **David:** _but your dog is a disgusting little bastard_

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _exactly_

“So Patrick,” David said, a little louder as though that was going to drown out Stevie’s texting, “what’s next for you? Found some Upper East penthouse you can crash in? Gonna write a book?”

It was a little rude of him, probably in poor taste, but Patrick actually looked kind of smug. As though he was sort of relieved that David’s options weren’t happening, and might never happen again.

“No, I’m staying here,” he said.

David looked up from his phone. Stevie stopped her clicking.

“What?” they said in unison.

“I went to see Ray Butani today like Stevie suggested, and we kind of negotiated a house share. I’m moving in with him.”

David clamped his lips together to stop them from falling open.

“That is not why I sent you over there,” Stevie said, laughing through her words.

“Oh, I got a job as well,” Patrick said easily. And David had never been more annoyed with him _or_ more attracted to him.

“Mm. Sounds like the kind of thing you go out and celebrate.”

Patrick looked at Stevie oddly. It was as though he was trying to work out if there was a wink behind her words.

“But I get off never, so don’t look at me,” she added hastily.

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _lmao his face was like “iS sHe aSkInG mE oUt?!?!”_

 **David:** _lollll leave him alone poor thing_

 **Big Dick Stevie:** _YOU go out with him then_

 **David:** _um,,, no? not in a million years. never. Not gona. I don’t even_

“So, you fancy doing something celebratory-y? There’s not much to do here, but...you - we - you could grab a coffee, or something?” David said, and then he hated himself.

Patrick blinked at him, and for a moment David thought he’d got it all wrong until Patrick smiled sheepishly.

“I mean, I guess I could.”

“Well, okay then.” David drummed his fingers on the desk and clicked his tongue literally just for something to do. “What, you mean now?”

“Uh…yes. Yeah, now is fine.”

“Oh my God, just get the fuck out,” Stevie muttered.

* * *

Patrick had imagined that the best day in this town so far would end somehow, but he couldn’t have guessed it would be like this.

After a painfully silent walk, the kind where unspoken conversation _should_ have hung comfortably in the air but instead was sagging over their heads like a harpooned whale, David had led Patrick to Hockley’s, a funky smelling but rather nice-looking coffee shop next to the town hall. David explained that when his family had got here that his dad, still full of young entrepreneurial energy, had gotten everyone in the town on a business spree. Something called Bob’s Bagels had lived and died a couple of times, Gwen Currie still churned out the odd bespoke dress for clientele with eclectic tastes every now and again, and from the sounds of it it was basically Ray’s origin story.

“All the staff here are unpaid American students who work here in exchange for bed and board on Mr. Hockley’s farm,” David said as they sat down. “Well, some of them stay in the motel, and some lodge with residents too. There’s a fine line between normal staff and farm staff, and it’s usually discernible by the blonde dreadlocks and bare feet.”

Patrick laughed, thankful for the break in awkwardness. He supposed talking about the town, or business, or both, would distract from whatever else it was making him break out in hives every time he tried to talk to David. And after he talked to David, for that matter.

“Well whatever they serve, it’s probably nicer than anything I’d get at the Café,” Patrick responded.

David grimaced. “Quick tip I learned today? Don’t get this year’s pumpkin spiced latte, unless you’re actually hungry instead and want a literal soup in a cup.”

“Does the café serve all its liquid foods in cups?”

“Have you had some Café Tropical horror story that I have yet to hear about?”

“I mean, you’d know if you’d been there,” Patrick said. He didn’t mean for it to come out bitterly, and he was sure it hadn’t, but he couldn’t be imagining the guilt on David’s face.

“Yeah, I’m…sorry about last night,” he said, biting his lip. “It’s just – my sister gets herself into all these situations, I’m always driving out of town to save her and Twyla from imminent death at the hands of rednecks, it’s a whole thing –”

“David, it’s fine –”

“Honestly, Twyla should start giving me free meals for –”

“David!” Patrick held up his hands. “Honestly. It’s _fine.”_

David seemed to let out a breath. He dropped his shoulders and some of the tension drained out of his face. He’d never seen David’s eyes in proper lighting before. They were almost completely black, and they glittered like they had angles to them.

“Okay. Can we just – can we just start this whole thing over?” David said, flapping a hand in front of his face. Patrick was sure he’d said something like that before. Or maybe he just said it to himself after every interaction. Someone came over and put their coffees down on the table, their chunky bangles jangling and tie-dye trousers sagging to the floor. David mouthed _farm staff_ as they left, and Patrick almost spluttered into his cup.

“For the…third? Fourth time? Okay, but this is your last chance, David Rose,” Patrick said. It was a gamble; he knew it before he said it. But if the flustered, pleased look on David’s face was anything to go by, he’d nailed this man’s brand of humour down pretty solidly.

“Noted,” David whispered into his coffee.

“So this is one of your dad’s ventures, huh?” Patrick said, looking around the coffee shop. It was nice. The shelves and counters had raw, splintery edges and there were succulents lining the windowsill. There were bags of tea on the counter and huge burlap sacks of coffee beans – well, he assumed they were coffee beans. They didn’t smell at all like coffee or beans.

“Mm-hm. Mind you, he wasn’t expecting it to be so…hempy, but it was always a nice place to study in high school.” David picked up his stirrer and started playing with the foam in his cup. “It’s sort of nice seeing bits of my family around the town, like my mom’s council decisions or my dad’s stores or any of the teenagers.”

“I’m assuming that last one is related to your sister, but how…?”

“She’s a newly qualified high school teacher,” David explained, saying the words as though Miss-Rose-the-teacher was the most terrible and unexpected idea in the world. “History and economics, mainly. She says she wants to be the ‘cool teacher’, but so far that just means she’s gotten into trouble for telling them all the loopholes in the council’s drinking regulations and letting them go on their phones in class.”

“And what about you?” Patrick said, hoping it came off as casual and not like he was desperate to know literally everything about him. “Where’s your place in the town?”

“Well…I’m in it, I guess,” David faltered, looking a little uncomfortable. “I’m – oscillating between life choices at the minute. I kind of lost my job yesterday, as you saw. Or I’m going to. The shelves are getting emptier and it’s not like anyone is gonna restock them, so. Yeah.”

“And after that? You have any ideas?”

David shrugged. “I have one, but it’s stupid.”

“No it isn’t.”

David looked up, his eyes wide. Different. More open.

“How do you know that?”

“Because it just isn’t. No such thing.”

“You can’t tell if –”

“Try me,” Patrick said. He knew what he was doing. Employing professional charisma tricks on someone who had no clue what the ins and outs of his old world looked like felt cruel, but they were working.

“I…kind of want to buy the store. Well, put a lease in. I wanted to make something out of it way before it was closing, but my boss Wendy was always kind of adamant that it stayed the same. I always hated the corporate feel of it. It would be much better if we rebranded local products and supported artist’s commissions and creative endeavours rather than selling 50-cent soap, don’t you think? But then my mom made some cheap moves at a council meeting to approve some other shitty idea, so now I don’t really have anything.”

“But did the other store get approved?”

“No, but the _idea_ was there, so I clearly have competition. And if I have competition, then it means I don’t have a chance.”

“Oh, I think you do,” Patrick said, the words falling out much smoother and slower than he’d intended them to. David looked away pointedly. “It’s very inventive,” he went on. “I mean it. I really think you have something there, David.”

David didn’t raise his head, but he looked at Patrick through his eyelashes. It was a ridiculously beautiful sight. Before he could get lost in it any longer, Patrick reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the business cards he’d made with Ray’s printer a couple of hours ago.

“For if you want to talk business,” he said, “of course.”

“Oh, nothing more, nothing less,” David added, nodding his head mock-thoughtfully. He looked it over:

_Patrick Brewer_

_Business consultation_

_Harvard MBA 2007-2011_

_PB Investments 2013-2017_

David held it away from him like an old person would hold their phone and blinked.

“Wow. Bet that gets you laid.”

Patrick wished he hadn’t just taken a gulp of coffee at that precise moment, because he ended up splattering it all over the table. David choked with laughter as well, grabbing a load of napkins and shoving them onto the wood that was absorbing it quick.

Patrick took a moment to look around self-consciously, but no one was looking. A half-empty coffee shop, some staff that looked like they could use a bit of entertainment, and no one was looking.

Just him, David and some laughter seeping fast between the cracks of the table. The way he liked it.

He could get used to this.

Once he’d recovered, Patrick wiped his chin with his hand and ordered two more coffees.

“So, David. Can we stop with the business talk, now?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Hello! It feels good to be posting again. I've had a turbulent couple of weeks but finally found a moment today to finally get this chapter out of my system, so I'm very happy right now!

**David:** _you know it shows me when you change your own nickname on the chat, right?_

**Patrick and David’s third wheel, apparently:** _yes. yes I do_

**David:** _it!!! was!! ONE!!!! coffee date!_

**David:** _not even a coffee date. It was a coffee thing_

**David:** _also why does ‘Patrick and David’ sound kind of weird, like saying chips and fish_

**Patrick and David’s third wheel, apparently:** _oh, so you have a correct name-saying order already? Jeez he might as well move in already_

**David:** _fuck you_

Stevie changed your nickname to **“Alexa, play ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ from the Grease soundtrack”.**

**“Alexa, play ‘Hopelessly Devoted to You’ from the Grease soundtrack”:** _I hope you die in the night_

You deleted Stevie’s nickname.

You deleted your nickname.

****

The Roses had been living in the wooden, warm, roomy 24 Alpine Road for coming up to sixteen years now. After their prolonged stay at the motel, then the three weeks when they had crashed at the Schitt’s when the motel pipes froze, the scrapings of Johnny’s various business ventures and his eventual steady job at the bank in Elmdale managed to buy them the four-bedroom just round the corner from the Town Hall.

It was an old house. Built in the early ‘50s, according to Roland, with a wide porch entrance and a set of stairs with a thick bannister so shiny from Moira’s constant repaints that the average time it took to slide down it had quickened considerably in the past decade. There were a lot of changes that Moira – and David, for that matter – often made impulsively, changes that were evident in the somewhat mismatched décor of the living room and landing. There were two huge metal peacock statues by each side of the fireplace that rattled when wind blew tough drafts through the chimney (which was often, given the ridiculous size of it). But Alexis had promised Johnny she would definitely put the fireplace to good use when they’d had it installed – “It’ll be, like, perfect for when I want to curl up in a little sweater with a cute little book and read, Dad” – and David had insisted upon it for aesthetic reasons, so Johnny was powerless to refuse.

The kitchen had a relationship in the works with each member of the family. While Moira and Johnny had originally sworn it off, still unused to the absence of a cook, Alexis had once been keen to spend her time experimenting with different recipes and had actually got quite good at it. She cooked most of the family’s meals now, and no one was complaining. But somewhere along the line Moira and Johnny had started to find comfort in the gently gaudy Mexicana design and its cast-iron slow cooker, and every anniversary they would spend making their own three-course meals.

There was, of course, the wall mounted singing fish above the cooker – which Alexis had christened Uncle Bill, for some reason – that had become something of a reluctant fifth family member. They all hated it, and would scream at whoever pushed the button to let the kitschy cover songs croak out of the bass’ plastic mouth, but for some reason it had never been taken down ever since Johnny had won it in the Town Hall’s harvest raffle in 2000.

Upstairs, there was a short landing with the doors of five rooms lined up in a way that reminded them all of the motel. What had once been the computer room became Moira’s wig room once everyone got laptops and phones. Alexis’ room was next, and David was pretty sure he hadn’t properly been in there for about a decade because it stressed him out so much. She had mountains of clothes that threatened to smother her in her sleep and so many different designs on the walls that it was difficult to keep up. She changed her ideas about what she wanted in it every couple of months, only she didn’t take down the old things first. It didn’t take much closer inspection to see that she still had posters up from teen girl mags that she neglected to take down in middle school. Even so, it was hers, and she would often find herself defending it and curling up into the mess of things for comfort. It was how she liked it, much like David’s was to him.

He relished in the time he’d spent curating the particular look of his room, and eventually settled on something that was probably as close to his old room as he was going to get under budgetary constraints. It was sharp and monochromatic yet still warm, with several silver-polished brass lamps that curved over the head of his bed and black fern in the corners. He had a bookshelf that Alexis hated because he’d turned all the books over so that the beige pages were visible instead of the covers to avoid any incorrect cluttering or clashing of hardback colors. He didn’t care what anyone said; he’d already memorised the order of the books and knew them by width and weight, which was unsurprising given how often he read. There was a hidden part of his room right next to his wardrobe, invisible from the door, with soft, downy beanbags and fluffy cushions right next to the radiator where he’d spent entire days before, reading and reading and reading. There was nothing better than the miserable view of rain outside his window when he had his own personal haven indoors.

To David, the house and his relationship with it were an indeterminate work in progress. He remembered despising the thing when they’d first moved into it. It made everything more permanent, and all David could see when he closed his eyes for the majority of his adolescence was his own face sewn tight into the fabric of the town, only reparable by means of ripping himself out.

Now, things were different. More and more, he saw Schitt’s Creek and himself as one; two things that couldn’t function without the other. It had been a while since he saw the town in that dark, damnable way. And while it was still something he didn’t like to think about very often, he knew deep down that the only way he was getting ripped out of this town was by someone else’s hands.

They all had a place here now. They had things to do, people to be. Moira, though still sashaying through Main Street on a daily basis carrying an absurd energy that was like a mix between Dolly Parton and Jo Bennett, was an integral part of the town’s daily running. Alexis would come home gushing about her new job, even if it was just about the high school girls who’d complimented her dresses. And Johnny, ever Johnny, was getting by. And though he’d not quite got round to saying it out loud, David couldn’t be prouder of any of them if he tried.

And tomorrow, he had something of his _own._ Something for him to talk about, to think about, to put his name on. He had help, too. And he had people who _wanted_ to help.

David was just about to push himself up from his corner and turn down the heater to start getting ready for bed. He’d spent the evening with Stevie after his date – no, thing – with Patrick, and in his state of newfound romantic panic he’d let her get him high on edibles and was talking nonstop about Patrick, even when he’d returned home. He was half sure he’d been texting Patrick random business ideas throughout the evening, but he couldn’t bring himself to check. He was halfway across the room, ready to switch off his phone when it pinged with a text.

**Patrick:** _Okay, thanks for all that info. Just checking we’re still on for tomorrow?_

Barely looking, David scrambled to reply.

**David:** _BITCH I thought I told you to die in the night_

**Patrick:** _…_

**Patrick:** _That’s a no, then?_

David stared down at his phone. Then stared at it again. Then filled with that cold-and-hot rush of embarrassed panic.

“Oh, fuck.”

**David:** _oh mygod_

**David:** _I’m SO sorry I thought you were Stevie, the nickname confused me_

**David:** _WAIT I’m not implying that Stevie’s nickname is your name_

**David:** _just – sjdks forget all of that. yes we are still on for tomorrow_

**David:** _We said 12, right?? U hh okay im sorry the edibles are wea ring off_

**David:** _Stevie got me high before and im sorry abot the texts with the businessy tings_

Most of David’s interactions with Patrick thus far had made him want to throw his phone across the room, but none of them had been quite this literal. He almost did, but relegated his instinct to switching the phone off and shoving it deep into his beside table drawer when he got over there and shedded his clothes for bed. Much to his father’s chagrin, David would sleep with all the heaters on accompanied by three whole duvets at this time of year. As soon as he bedded himself down into the soft little furnace, the embarrassment of his texting mistake subsided. It was just one more mistake on top of the veritable mess that had been David and Patrick’s – _would you say relationship?_ he thought – so far, and that was just another normal for them. He would call it a false start, but…well. They’d started a while ago. Not really such thing as a false start in anything, really.

And whatever the hell was going on, David didn’t plan on stopping any time soon.

****

David was very pointedly not thinking about last night’s miscommunication with Patrick as he made his way to Ray’s. He hadn’t looked at his phone to see the damage done by his intoxicated ramblings about business and having Patrick respond to him just before bed, as though he could somehow neglect to claim responsibility for whatever the hell he was about to walk into. Would Patrick be mad at him for being so unprofessional? Or maybe offended that David had literally sent him a death threat over text?

David took a deep breath to steel himself and opened the office door. He winced at the first sight of Patrick, sat behind his desk in his Armani suit, the creases ironed so sharply it could have been done by a military officer. Thankfully, the suit was enough of a distraction that David almost forgot all about the texts. And while Patrick looked _very_ good…it wasn’t exactly a nice distraction to have.

“Okay, no. No to all of this,” was he first thing that came out of David’s mouth. He stuck out a hand and circled it around Patrick’s form. Patrick looked up, surprised at both David’s sudden appearance and what he’d said.

“What, this?” Patrick said, gesturing to the papers in his hand.

David shook his head fervently. “No. The _suit._ I can’t be sat in yesterday’s sweater that still smells of weed with flattened hair while you’re opposite me looking like a rich senior trying too hard to get into USMA.”

Patrick snorted into the tea he’d brought to his lips and stared at David in amused surprise. “You just won’t let me catch a break here, will you?”

David smirked. “Not ‘til you realise how we do business around here. The last thing that you could viably call a business meeting that I ever had was with my dad at our kitchen table, both of us in our pyjamas, and it ended with me throwing a wall-mount fish across the room and denouncing the entire concept of fiscal responsibility. Oh, and Dad was crying? Still not sure why.”

Patrick was silent as he stared at David, his lips pulled down in a little frown that looked far more like a smile. He left just enough time and just enough pointed eye contact for both of yesterday’s interactions to settle between them and hang in the air unsaid. It was a look that both said _I had a really good time yesterday_ and _those texts were pretty interesting, though._

“You know, I thought you were kidding about the weed smell, but…it’s really strong,” Patrick said, bringing a flat palm under his nose and squinting at David.

David scoffed. “Don’t tell me your little Wall Street buddies weren’t doing much harder stuff than this behind the scenes.”

Shrugging, Patrick conceded. “True. I can’t say I ever wanted to participate, but I’ve seen what pretty much every drug can do to the average human during my 9 to 5.”

He stared at David with that infuriating little face for a moment longer.

“If you’re trying to convince me that you read every one of those stupid texts by staring at me like that, you’ve done your job,” David snapped, but there was no real bite in it.

“Oh, I definitely read them all,” Patrick said. “If it makes you feel any better though, I was much more invested in the first couple you sent earlier in the evening. ‘Rose Apothecary’, huh?”

“What – I told you about that?”

“Took you three times to spell it right,” Patrick said. He held out his phone with David’s garbled texts on them as he took off his jacket slowly and loosened his tie. Underneath he was wearing a simple blue shirt that was definitely the cheapest thing he owned. It must have definitely come from Before. David had only known Patrick for a couple of weeks, but he’d started piecing together bits of the man’s character into Before and After sections. Patrick might still have been mentally wrapped up in the ten-figure world of Wall Street, but there was something else there. there was some _one_ else there, David knew it. He might have a way to go, but it started with things like taking off an Armani jacket for a meeting about a little artisanal store in a Middle America nowhere town. Taking it off and leaving the blue underneath.

“Since we’ve pretty much established the bones of the business in between our meeting yesterday and your stoner texts, all we need to do now is copy it out onto these forms and I’ll send off for your license as soon as possible,” Patrick said.

David clicked his pen and brought the paper closer to him, muttering “stoner texts” under his breath with a shake of his head.

“I can’t help but notice your use of the royal ‘we’,” David said as he filled out his name and date of birth, cupping his hand around the paper so that Patrick couldn’t see the year. “Well, I’m assuming it’s the royal ‘we’, or are you planning on doing something more?”

Patrick ducked his head a little, interlinked fingers rubbing against each other somewhat nervily. “Well…I’ve been thinking about how you’re going to finance this thing once you’ve got the main stuff sorted. I don’t wanna make assumptions, but you seem like you need a lot of help.”

“Saying you don’t want to make an assumption right before making an assumption doesn’t make it not an assumption,” David said slowly. Patrick’s eyes sparkled, and _fuck,_ how could dark eyes be so bright?

A comfortable silence fell between them as David filled in the rest of the form. Patrick turned to his computer, pretending not to look, but David could see his eyes flicker towards David’s hands skimming across the page and the concentrated face David could feel himself pulling. He hoped he wasn’t imagining the little smile tugging on the corner of Patrick’s lips.

When he was done, David cleared his throat and flipped the stapled pages back over. “Well, now that that’s done, I guess – I guess that’s it, then,” he said awkwardly.

Patrick’s face fell a fraction. “I guess so. Thanks for coming in, David.”

David nodded once, shuffling his coat on his lap and trying to muster the motivation to stand.

“So, do you have any other appointments today? Anything busy going on?” David said instead of standing, staring at Patrick expectantly.

“What – oh, uh. No. That’s it for today.” Patrick twisted his mouth in what David was surprised to see was a very David-esque way, tapping his fingers over his keyboard without actually punching in any letters. Then he sighed forcefully. An ‘ah, fuck it’ kind of sigh.

“David, what’s being set up down the street?”

David looked outside at the familiar stalls, the slow cookers that he knew were full of chilli and mulled wine, the fake pumpkins and warm orange garlands dotted with paper sunflowers and plastic brown leaves.

“Harvest festival,” David said. “It happens every last weekend of the month. There’s markets, food hamper auctions, pie making contests, pie _eating_ contests, pie –”

“Do you want to look round together?”

Part of David didn’t want to begrudge Patrick the courage he’d mustered up to ask David out. And another part of him really wanted to have a look around. So overall, there wasn’t really a part of him that didn’t want to go.

“Yes. Yes, I would like that. However, I should warn you that I need to –”

But Patrick was already grabbing his coat and making his way out the door, tapping David on the shoulder on the way out.

****

“You’re unstoppable, you know that?”

Patrick was half listening to David’s protest as they left Ray’s and half completely enraptured by the sight unfolding before him. Tables upon tables of wooden handcrafts, cheeses, jewellery, preserves and just about every other conceivable thing that humans could make with their hands were lined up through the Main Street and beyond, all decorated in red gingham or fairy lights or simply left plain and wooden. Twyla was sitting on the steps of the café with what smelled like a huge vat of cocoa and was handing it out to kids. Roland, inexplicably, was dressed up like a scarecrow – even though it had taken Patrick a second to realise he was wearing anything different than normal – and checking on each stall’s progress as everyone set up, raising his hand above it in what he was calling “a blessing from the mayor”.

Patrick couldn’t look away. It was a cold day, cold enough for a couple of layers at least, but the street was so warm. The smell of spices and people and food permeated the air and filled him from the inside. The whole town was here and within the hour since he’d last looked out the window everything was as bright and dancing as a sparkler, simple but golden.

“Like what you see?” David said behind him. Patrick turned around to see that David’s face had already taken on the cold. His nose was red from where it peeked out underneath his coat and his eyes were close to streaming. Patrick suppressed a smile at the sight.

“I do,” he said. “It reminds me of home. Which is weird, because we didn’t really do anything like this at home, but…still.”

David gestured towards the street and they started walking in step, looking around even more as the food carts lifted their awnings and a playlist of gentle folky music started streaming from a nearby speaker.

“Before we left, I was about to tell you that in a few minutes we need to –”

But Patrick was only partly listening, too distracted by the sight of toffee apples being freshly dipped and a stall behind which Alexis and who he assumed was Ted, who he’d heard about but not yet met, were standing, selling what looked like plaid animal sweaters.

“Look, David! There’s a sign over here for that pie making contest you were on about.”

Patrick made to move on when he was stopped short by David’s hand gripping his upper arm. If the force of it hadn’t startled him, he would have enjoyed that bit of manhandling a lot more.

“Yes, I _know_ there’s a pie making contest. But there won’t be any pies to judge if we don’t get out of here and go back to my house right now.”

Patrick turned and stared at David for a moment. “Is that – that a euphemism, or –”

“No, Patrick, just listen!” David sighed and let go of his arm. “Mom and I have this stupid tradition that started when we were here for our first year and Jocleyn let us use her kitchen to make a pie. We usually enter the contest every year, but this year as you can see she’s a little…preoccupied.”

David gestured towards the end of the market stalls where Moira Rose was stood authoritatively in what looked like a makeshift nest, dressed like an enormous crow and telling stories about “eldritch horrors” and “provincial Romanticism” to a gaggle of terrified-looking children.

“So…you want to help me make a pie?”

“Yes.”

“With you.”

“Yes.”

“In your kitchen.”

“What part of yes are you not understanding?”

Patrick sighed, keeping his explanation stored for later as David turned around and started moving out of the steadily growing crowd. It didn’t take long to return to David’s house, and as soon as they crossed the threshold David shed his coat and darted to the kitchen immediately. Patrick followed behind him as quickly as he could, but slowed down when he reached the kitchen and saw who he assumed was David’s father sat at the kitchen table in a mauve fleece, glasses perched at the end of his nose as he squinted at something on his laptop.

He looked up when Patrick came in and stopped muttering, his expression that of someone who was clamoring for recognition.

“Oh, uh, h-hello, son, haven’t seen you in a while –”

“Dad, this is Patrick, and you’ve never met him,” David called over his father’s rambling.

As David led Patrick across to the kitchen worktops, he muttered, “Dad always assumes every adult over the age of thirty I bring into the house is someone I dated in high school.”

“Wait, Pat – you mean Patrick Brewer?”

David tightened his lips and nodded. “Mm. Yup.”

David’s father stood up solemnly and crossed the kitchen, sticking out a hand.

“Johnny Rose,” he said coldly. And then he took up his laptop and left the room without another word.

“Did I – did I do something, or –”

“Don’t worry, he’s just salty because you’re the kind of person who would have probably fucked us over twenty years ago,” David said casually, pulling flour and scales from the cupboards. “Grab the butter from the fridge, will you?”

Patrick did so, and he and David started making the pie crust in comfortable silence, but he couldn’t shake that little interaction from his mind. Johnny had stood up and turned his back on him immediately, and the worst part was is that Patrick didn’t blame him at all. He had no idea what he would have done if he was this age twenty years ago, working with people like Johnny Rose, working _above_ people like Johnny Rose with the chance to ruin everything. It was an addiction, playing with all that pretend fucking money. And Patrick was still trying to work out what he meant without it.

“You know, uh…” he started after a couple minutes of thought, “the last time I made a pie was about two years ago with my mom. She invited me over for Christmas and tried to recreate all our old traditions, but I just wasn’t on board with it all for some reasons. My phone kept ringing with work and I couldn’t stop thinking about all the time I was wasting while I was there. We ended up getting into a fight and I left halfway through. On Christmas Eve.”

“Do you mean left as in you stormed into your room like a teenager or left as in…”

“Nope, straight back to New York.”

“On Christmas Eve?”

“Yup.”

“Wow.” David blew out his cheeks in a quick breath. “No wonder you didn’t want to make this thing.”

“No, no, don’t worry about it. It’s not as though pie is, like, a trigger for me or anything. I guess it just sort of got me thinking about things.”

“What sorts of things?”

Against his own will, Patrick looked at the clock. With the gentlest of touches, David turned Patrick’s jaw away from it and down towards the apples he was about to start peeling and chopping up.

“Mm, nope. No looking at the clock. While we’re making this pie, time doesn’t exist. Okay?”

Patrick took a deep breath through his nose and picked up the sharp apple corer. “Okay.”

And as he cut and peeled and stewed away at the first thing he’d truly _made_ in a while, he spoke. Everything flooded out of him as easy as a hot knife through butter. The guilt, the insecurity, the panic, how stupid he felt at letting all of his money slip away. The existentialism of realizing that money isn’t real. How on earth he was going to build himself back up after all of this.

“You already are,” David said. “You started building yourself back up from the moment you fell. You just might not realize it until you reach the top again.”

Patrick scoffed, trying not to let on that every fibre of his being had just filled with more warmth than he’d felt in three weeks. No – three years.

“Who taught you to say things like that?”

David shrugged. “It’s something my therapist told me a couple of years ago and I never forgot it,” he explained. “After I stopped running back to my old friends and boozing every other night to forget I was here, my parents saved up to get Alexis and I some therapy to cope with the move. It’s kind of like routine now, going and talking everything through. Though I haven’t been needing to go as much in the past year or so.”

“Hmm.” Patrick tipped the last few chunks of apple into the pan and switched on the cooker, adding a cup of water and some cinnamon to the pile. “And what do you mean by ‘the top’? What is ‘the top’, anyway?”

“It’s whatever you want it to be,” David said. “If for you it means going back to your old job and regaining everything, then –”

Patrick shook his head fiercely. “Don’t,” he gritted out. “No. Don’t.”

David threw him a strange look, but said nothing. Patrick had said more than enough now for both of them to silently realize that Patrick’s prior career was the exact opposite of him being at the top. It was rock bottom. For three years.

Despite the random urge to cry, Patrick felt worlds lighter after his venting and the subsequent revelation. The silence went back from tense to comfortable and they started constructing the pie together. The smell of it, all the tart apple and smooth, spicy cinnamon, revived Patrick’s senses and reminded him of simpler times. Younger times. He felt young here, with David. Like he could regain his late twenties and put together the pieces of him that were meant to be there all along.

“So how many people are judging this competition?” Patrick said, once the pie was in the oven and they’d stood back, to admire the sight of it on the bright shelf.

“There isn’t really a real judge, it’s just whoever’s quickest to the seat,” David said. “It’s usually Alexis since she’ll push everyone out the way to get there, but she and Twyla got disqualified from all association with the pie making and eating contests last year after a series of incidents involving Twyla’s thieving cousin and some laced ingredients.”

“Laced ingredients? What were they laced with?”

David shrugged. “None of us can remember.”

Patrick chuckled, moving closer to the counter to clear away the utensils when David stopped him.

“What’re you doing? We need to make the mini pies now!”

“Mini pies? You didn’t say anything about mini pies.”

“We make mini ones as well to hand out to the kids. Come on, get that apple mix back out of the fridge.”

Patrick opened the fridge door and pulled out the bowl, then –

“David! I had my back turned for a _second,_ what the hell?”

David smiled at him wickedly, his hand coated in flour just as much as Patrick’s back was. “This was the one part of baking my mom never got on board with,” he said. “I haven’t had a proper food fight since Stevie and I got banned from cooking class as seniors.”

Well. If there was one good thing Patrick’s job had taught him, it was to never back down from a challenge.

“You’re on.”

“However I do have rules, and it’s that you shouldn’t get any of that icing sugar on this sweater because it – ohhhh, fuck you. No. _You’re_ on.”

Brushing furiously at the icing sugar that was clinging to his front, David swiped a handful of butter and smeared it over Patrick’s arm. Leaning backwards away from the assault, Patrick responded in kind and the battle raged on until both of them were breathing hard with laughter and dodging actual jabs rather than just flying food.

Once Patrick had caught his breath, he realized David had been staring at him for a while. There was a curious look on his face, and Patrick couldn’t decide if he just looked strange covered in food or whether there was something David wanted to do. He also couldn’t wait to find out, so he stepped forward.

David’s eyes scanned the plane of Patrick’s face and neck, then he reached out a tentative hand and brushed it just below his lip. “You’ve got a bit of – bit of something there, I think, Patrick.”

“Oh, you think?”

It came out barely above a whisper, but David caught it. He gave the tiniest of nods, nod moving his thumb and forefinger from Patrick’s chin, and in smooth sync they leaned in. The kiss was soft, brief, and tasted of apples. Patrick wondered if it would have tasted like that if they weren’t covered in the things right now. He snaked a floury hand around David’s waist and brought him in, breathing in the scent beyond the food, wondering what kind of product he used. Whether it smelled of apples.

They jumped back with a start when the cooker started beeping. David’s sweater sleeve had been draping over the touchscreen ‘on’ button. He switched it off, and Patrick wanted desperately to lean back in, but they shuffled further apart, clearing their throats between sheepish smiles.

“I, uh…I don’t think we’ll have time to start on those mini pies any time soon,” Patrick said.

David shook his head. “I lied. No such thing. I just wanted an excuse to stay in the kitchen.”

He looked a little punch-drunk, and Patrick laughed, loud and clear, at David and the mess and the whole situation he’d found himself in. God, he’d never felt this much _warmth_ in a while. Everything about it was warm. He bet the shower was warm.

“Mind if I go upstairs and clean up a bit?” he said.

“Sure,” David said. “You can borrow some clothes from my dad if you want, they’ll probably fit.”

Patrick got himself into the shower, grateful for the water pressure and warmth that were better than Ray’s and miles better than the motel. Afterwards, he searched gingerly down the hall for Mr and Mrs Rose’s room, hoping the door would be open and the room empty. It was, so he picked out a red plaid shirt from the wardrobe. His jeans were easily fixable with a few brush-downs, so he put them on and went back downstairs.

When he rounded the corner into the kitchen, David had cleaned everything up – including himself – and the pie was sat on the counter, steaming and golden. David had baked a tiny little pastry rose and sat it on top of the pie – “it’s our signature design” – and before long they were ready to head back out the door to the harvest festival.

“Wait – just quickly, before we go,” Patrick said quietly. He crowded David gently against the counter and put his hands on his waist, kissing him again. It was even softer than the first time without all the adrenaline of their food fight. David smiled into it so hard they were forced to break apart.

“We’re gonna be late,” David whispered.

“We can make another pie.”

“Absolutely not.” David’s face went serious. “You submit your first attempt or you’re a coward.”

****

It was only mid-afternoon when they got back outside, but Patrick was surprised to see the sky darkening already. The string lights and firepit that had been put outside the Café, where Twyla was roasting marshmallows for the kids, stood out against the grey weather and made Patrick feel like he was wandering into a giant warm oven. He pulled his coat sleeves over his hands, and for some reason he was glad that he was wearing red plaid. It wasn’t his usual color, but it felt right for the occasion.

A makeshift stage had been erected at the end of the street. David climbed the steps and put their apple pie down on the gingham tablecloth. To the right, prospective judges were scrambling for a signup sheet. Patrick didn’t recognize any of them except Ray, who gave Patrick a very obvious wink as he climbed the steps and started looking over the pies. He smiled fondly, knowing exactly what Ray was going to choose even if his and David’s pie was his least favorite.

“You made it out here, huh?”

Patrick turned around to see Stevie, standing in a khaki coat and bobble hat. She held out a cardboard cup of mulled wine for Patrick, who took it with a thanks.

“Where’s my mulled wine?” David said.

“Oh, there’s a whole vat of it over there. You should try it, it’s good.”

Patrick had never seen a human actually bare its teeth at another one before, but that’s exactly what David did as he stormed off. Stevie chuckled smugly and took a long drink.

“So you’re surprised I’m here?” Patrick said.

“I guess,” Stevie responded, licking her lips and brushing a stray bit of wine from her chin with a gloved finger. “It doesn’t seem like your kind of thing. I’m glad you’re here, though. It’s good fun.”

Patrick smiled at her. “I’d like to think it is my kind of thing. Or…it could be, I don’t know.”

Stevie nodded. Something unspoken passed between them, and they didn’t need to say anything more but he knew she understood. “Okay.”

By the time David arrived back, the pie had all been judged and Stevie was draining her cup, looking as though she was readying herself for a sprint. Patrick looked at her oddly, but David didn’t seem to think anything of it.

“Once again, thank you to all our entries for this year’s pie contest,” Jocelyn shouted into her microphone. “The judges have decided their winner and written it down on this paper in my hand.” She scrunched her face into a funny look of suspense and opened up the paper. Her over-surprised gasp as she looked at the paper caused deafening mic feedback to ring through the street.

“It’s _me!_ Oh my God! I can’t believe it! I just, I had _no idea_ that that would happen, I can’t –”

“Alright, alright, you’ve been winning for the past seven years, get over yourself,” a short, hard woman interrupted as she came onto the stage and took the mic from Jocelyn. Patrick was sure David had introduced her as Ronnie once. “Okay, folks, you know what comes next.”

Stevie was bouncing on the balls of her feet. David winced expectantly, and Patrick was even more confused when David grabbed hold of his wrist.

Ronnie cackled and gripped the mic tighter as the audience thrummed with energy.

“Three…two…one…GO!”

In a flurry of movement that almost sent Patrick flying to the ground, half the crowd clamoured for the stage. David, still gripping Patrick’s wrist, yanked him upwards and ran for the table, where hands and pie dishes and crumbs were flying manically as far too many people tried to wrestle for the chance to take far too few pies home. There were about thirty, as far as Patrick could see, and twelve pies. Stevie looked like she’d had this game nailed down to an artform for several years. Her technique was quick and clean, and she came away victorious with an entire cherry pie balanced on one hand.

David and Patrick didn’t end up with a pie, but Patrick was left smeared in crumbs and his stomach hurt from laughter. They reunited with Stevie at the side of the stage and tried to grab for hers instead, but she staked her claim with a huge bite from the middle.

“Come on, I’ll find us something else to eat,” David said. He led Patrick away from the stage and down the middle of the stalls, and now that they had a proper opportunity to look around Patrick let himself get lost in that warm, baked, wooden comfort of homemade things. The sound and smell of frying sausages and live music filled the air, and somewhere in between it all David took Patrick’s hand and linked them together between the thick folds of their coats.

Maybe he’d done it when they’d passed the hand-cut soaps, or the candle holders carved like woodland animals, or the weird dog sweaters. It didn’t matter, because he was here and everything was cheap and David was holding his hand and somehow, for the first time in more than a while, it felt like home.

It all felt like home.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Hello! Wow, I have abandoned this fic. I apologise for everyone waiting for that "wEeKLy uPdAtE" i initially promised.  
> \- No worries, I'm here now. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

When Patrick woke up, one week after he thought the harvest festival was _supposed_ to end, he thought for a mad moment that he was back in New York. His head was pounding in that low, dull way only his old work colleague’s parties seemed to achieve. Except then, with those fat cats and their sycophants, the intoxication wasn’t even that fun. He couldn’t feel his face half the time, and even when he would wake up he felt none of the ironically cosy hangover feelings he used to laugh about over a greasy fried breakfast with his friends at home.

The difference was, though Patrick was terribly hungover right now, he _had_ had a fun night last night. The final day of Schitt’s Creek’s fall celebrations went out with a bang, and Patrick had fully thrown himself – rather, let himself be thrown – into the kind of party he’d escaped from on his second night in town.

Having no one to be hungover with now was a minus, but he’d enjoyed the kind of drunk he had gotten. He’d enjoyed the thin, gristly burgers and the crappy fireworks. He’d enjoyed the games and the laughter, and all of it put to shame the “parties” he tried too hard to enjoy in his old life, where the alcohol cost more than the average house in this town.

And in his sleepy, half-drunk haze, his eyes not fully open yet, an old quote he heard somewhere, sometime, came to him. From some comedy he barely remembers, he thought.

“Huh. ‘Sometimes, things that are expensive are worse.’”

It made him chuckle a little to himself as he lay alone in the new room he was learning to adjust to. He’d forgotten how much easier it was to clean spaces like this. Ray had been letting him stay for free on the condition that he helped out with cooking and cleaning, and Patrick had already vowed to find him the biggest Christmas hamper possible as a thank you when he had the money. There were no heavy marble statues that got dusty because Patrick didn’t want to knock them over. The carpet was a plush, heathered mauve that he could dig his socks into; worlds away from the slippery vinyl of his apartment, but all the better for it. He was done living in a world he was too scared to touch.

That thought was bumping gently against the corners of his mind as he snuggled back down to sleep off his hangover.

Then the phone was ringing.

And for some reason the clock on the other side of the room read half past twelve, even though Patrick _knew_ it had been eleven five minutes ago.

…Had it?

Rubbing his eyes, he flung an arm out for his phone on the bedside table and pressed accept before he’d brought it to his ear.

“Mm…’ello?”

And if Patrick wasn’t so groggy, he might have heard the faintest disappointed sigh on the other end of the call.

“Are you still in bed, Patrick?”

Patrick made a tiny noise that could probably only be categorised as a grumble. “I’m not sure there’s anyone in the town who was out last night who isn’t,” he said.

“I’m not.”

That made Patrick sit up.

“Wh– um, what is it? Is there somewhere I’m meant to be?”

“We were meant to look round the store today, Patrick. The general store cleared out all its stuff the other day and you were going to help me – I don’t know, measure it, or something.”

Shit. “Um, yeah. I did say that.” Patrick screwed his eyes shut one final time and scrubbed his hand over his face, then swung his legs over the bed. “Listen, can you just come back to the store later and we can do it then?”

David made a frustrated little noise, but somehow Patrick felt like it wasn’t for him to hear.

“Okay. Well, um…I have to drive to Elmdale later.”

Patrick smiled, but it was only after he said, “yeah, but do you _have_ to, though?” that he realised David couldn’t actually see his smile.

“Um…yes? You may have realised that there is currently no general store in town. I need things.”

The small, ugly side of Patrick that was shrinking every day stirred a little, but Patrick tightened his lips. It wasn’t fair of him to expect David to drop his own plans after Patrick had been the one to ruin them in the first place.

“Okay. Just text me when you’re back and I’ll be at the store straight away,” Patrick said.

They said their goodbyes and Patrick shook himself awake, padding to the bathroom slowly to wash his face and get ready. To his surprise, the town _was_ up and about. And as Patrick’s hangover seemed to notice, louder than usual. There were cars passing every five seconds on the street and Ray’s office seemed to be overflowing with people. He felt a little stupid now. He’d been lounging around in bed all day when everyone who was at the same party as him last night were getting on with their lives.

Patrick splashed his face with cold water, the sudden change in temperature finally banishing the last of his tiredness. He moved through the motions of getting ready as quickly as he could, finally getting there as the clock hit one. He didn’t want to walk downstairs and look as though he’d only got up half an hour ago, so he picked up a random book and the empty mug that had been sat on his bedside table for two days before he headed downstairs.

“Ah, Patrick!” Ray said as Patrick rounded the corner. He was squatting down in front of a green screen with a camera jammed to his eye. On two black, tall-backed seats in front of him sat a very prim, pasty couple who looked like they were straight out of _Little House on the Prairie._

The camera clicked a few more times before Ray said, “Oh, I have an email for you! Not sure why it was sent to my email address – or how they even got my address, for that matter – but it’s got your name on it. Take a look on my computer.”

Patrick frowned, moving behind Ray’s desk to wake up the computer and see the email. It was from some unrecognisable burner account, so Patrick had a feeling he knew it was going to be.

From: mfzviixtlhule@tsyefn.com

Subject: Patrick??

To: rb.businesses@mail.com

I think this is you? Unless you’re deeeep in hiding and the IP address I matched to ur phone is screwed. Anyway. Keep doing you, but just lettin u know that things are progressing. The Endcom guys got arrested (u won’t see it in the news tho, it’s all secrets atm). They’re working on getting our shit back to us, but nothing is certain.

I’m back home (in Newcastle, not NYC). It’s kind of nice. Enjoying mum's cooking, tbh. Miss u lad.

Wexas Inc.

Patrick must have read the email about ten times before he started to make sense of it. In the background, Ray was loudly instructing the couple _(“Just put your arm a bit closer, Jeremiah – Can we maybe try and look happier, Edith? You are getting married, after all – Yes, I know marriage is a sacred and solemn institution, I just – never mind”),_ but it came like static fuzz to Patrick’s ears compared to the words on the screen.

Wexas…he recognised that name well. Weston Smith was a friend of his from Harvard who had gone on to pursue a similar career to Patrick’s. They’d grown up similarly, so naturally they had gravitated towards one another. A rural Canadian and a rural Brit, stood together against the high, grey tower of Wall Street.

‘Working on getting our shit back to us’? What did that even mean? Who was working? Patrick’s stomach lurched with overwhelm at the thought of his money. The past month or so had been a lot, and he wasn’t about to deny how much fun he’d had during the harvest festival, but…

A billion dollars.

He’d had a _billion_ dollars.

Even a half-percent of that could buy him a decent house. A holiday. He could give back to his parents.

Patrick started drumming his fingers on the tabletop nervously until the stoic bride shot him a glare that Patrick knew would scare the daylights out of her future ten children one day. He sat for another five minutes, wondering whether or not to reply, when a text came through from David.

 **David:** _I’m back_

Patrick breathed out. At least now he had something to distract himself with. He mumbled a quick goodbye to Ray, who was trying to prise Jeremiah out of a praying position, then grabbed his hat and coat and crossed over the road.

David was already in the store when Patrick got there, looking up at the top shelves and running a finger over their bottom edges. He turned quickly when Patrick closed the door behind him, his eyebrows slightly creased in the way he’d heard over the phone that morning. Nonetheless, his face broke out into a smile, and he approached Patrick hesitantly to give him a soft kiss. They’d been doing that a lot this week, stealing them over firework displays and the few minutes they could catch alone between town-related activities stole them away again, but it never failed to buckle Patrick’s knees.

“Hi,” David said softly, reaching up to adjust Patrick’s hat.

“Hi.” After lingering another second, Patrick gently prised himself out of David’s arms and took a look around the store.

“It looks a lot bigger than it did last time I was in here,” Patrick said, knocking on the walls and eyeing up the size between the two backroom doors like he had seen his dad do when he was refurbishing rooms. “It’s a good space.”

“Shall we get started?”

The next hour passed easily, if not a tiny bit tensely, with David and Patrick measuring the most important diameters of the room and writing them down for David to take to the woodworker’s in Elmdale. Patrick was conflicted about whether to tell David of the strange email he'd received, but he didn't want to burden David with it. He was very close to telling him at one point, but when he tuned back in to the conversation David was talking about what he wanted to do with the store and he didn't want to interrupt.

“…And I think I’d like something for the middle, like a big wooden shelf with a raw finish. I want it to look…I don’t know. Neat, with all the products in their correct places, yet unfinished at the same time? Only I’m the only person who knows it’s actually finished. Oh, what’s the word?”

Patrick looked up at David and smiled fondly. “Compact?”

David snapped his fingers and pointed at Patrick. “That’s the one. Compact. Homely.”

“Kind of like your house, then.”

“What do you mean?”

Patrick shrugged, taking the last few measurements of the small floor corners and noting them down. “You know, everything’s sort of shoved together. I’m assuming you brought a load of the decorations and stuff from your old house when you moved, did you?”

“Um…no, they’re mainly new. We’re not clinging onto our old life, you know.”

“Oh, I know!” Patrick rectified, turning to face David. He looked uneasy again, which made Patrick’s heart sink. “I was just…you have a lot of – things. That’s all.”

“We like it like that.”

There was something about David’s insecure tone and the ‘we’ that Patrick didn’t have that made him equal parts guilty and irritated. It was directed _at_ David, per se, but he just felt a little…misunderstood. When he’d learned that David had been through a similar loss as a teenager, he’d been expecting a family still clamouring to get everything back. The people he’d got to know were perhaps the furthest thing he could imagine from that image. It warmed his heart to see David so happy, so settled, but still left him feeling alienated. There were still times on a night when he wanted to call David and just rant about the adjustment and the frustration and the not-having of it all, but David had never seemed interested in going over it. They were natives here, in all senses of the word except birth. Natives with very good taste.

They didn’t talk much after that, but the silence wasn’t exactly incompatible. David took a couple of calls from Alexis, who was telling him about a kid in her class whose dad worked in finance and would be able to talk to him about small business loans and grants if he needed it.

“Thanks, that’d be – wait, it’s fine! I have Patrick. He knows about this kind of thing. I’ll get him to look into it for me.”

Patrick lifted his head at David’s considerably perked-up tone. David caught his eye and smiled as he hung up the phone.

“I’ll be honest, Patrick, I need a lot of help with this whole thing,” David said. “I’m assuming you know a lot about small grants for businesses and things like that. Would you be able to look into it for me?”

Patrick wasn’t expecting David to be so upfront about needing help, and he wasn’t sure what to make of it. He had agreement on the tip of his tongue, but there was something knocking around at the edges of his skull that he couldn’t help but tune in and listen to.

_Don’t do it. You can’t even help yourself. You’d mess it up._

Patrick pulled himself out of his thoughts and returned his gaze to the sheet of paper in front of him. “I could, but I don’t want to overstep. This is your business, after all.”

“Wha– I only asked for help, Patrick. All I’m doing is taking a bit of work off my own hands.”

Patrick put his pencil down. He didn’t think there was any force in it, but the offended look on David’s face said otherwise. “And I just think it would be more gratifying if you sought the early parts of the business out yourself,” he said. “Trust me, there’s really something to be said for seeing your results and knowing you did all that yourself.”

Someone had said that to Patrick about six months into his career. Little did they know he’d been all but ready to quit at the time, and he had since said the phrase to himself almost every single day. He applied it to almost every aspect of his life.

But instead of looking inspired, instead of looking changed like Patrick had expected, David just grimaced.

“No offence, but that sounds really fucking lonely.”

Patrick went cold.

_You even managed to mess up your success. They probably all think you’re weird. You don’t belong anywhere._

The coldness didn’t quite subside, instead sitting itself deep in his stomach. But a rush of anger was hot on its heels.

“Well, I’m sorry that you asked for my help,” he said, his voice harsh. “But that’s what I’ve got to give you. That’s what I know.”

“No, what you _know_ is more about business than I do! All I wanted was for you to point me in the right direction, and you’re biting my head off!”

Patrick groaned, scrubbing a hand over his face. “If you can’t go out and find these things for yourself, then how can you expect the business to actually go anywhere? Why are you looking for help without seeing if you can do it yourself first?”

“Ugh!” David stood up, snatching up his coat from the counter. “Because things don’t just come to people, you know! Just because everything falls in your lap, doesn’t mean that it falls in everyone else’s!”

“…What does?”

David sighed irritably. “What?”

“What _falls in my lap,_ David? Embezzlement? Being scammed out of everything I own? Finally managing to build all those walls around myself only to have them knocked down by someone I thought was my friend?”

The air between them was charged, heavy, and Patrick couldn’t take it anymore.

“Forget it.” Before David could put his coat on, Patrick was already headed towards the door. He closed it behind him with a slam, the cold on his face invigorating but much less welcome than it had been this morning.

****

As soon as Patrick came back to Ray’s, he got into some more comfortable clothes and made himself some tea. He could feel his face burning and was trying desperately not to cry in front of Ray, even though he was almost more overwhelmed than he had been when he came to town. He had no idea what had just happened with David, and it felt like one of his only support sources was gone.

He put his tea down on his bedside table gently and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, freely letting himself cry now that he was in the privacy of his room. He knew he’d been approaching this wrong from the start, messing up round every corner, all down to his dogged determination to _do it all himself._ All David had done was ask for help, and Patrick had been…what even was that, back there? What was he playing at, getting so angry over a simple request?

 _Jealous,_ that same voice in the back of his head said. _You’re jealous._

Only this time, Patrick had to agree with it.

He was jealous. He was jealous of everyone’s freedom here. The freedom to mess up and be silly and unwind. The freedom he saw in Alexis last night, clutching onto Twyla’s arm as they hopped out of the Wobbly Elm, one-shoed and splashed in wine. The freedom he saw in the Rose’s house and all its things. He hadn’t meant for it to be an insult. He admired their resilience in the face of what they had been through twenty years ago, and he was _jealous of it._

After sitting for a while longer letting himself cry, he wiped his face and took a sip of tea. It was at the optimum temperature, the kind that reminded him of the pot his mom would always have ready for him when he came in from hockey practice. It gave him an idea.

He sniffed and let out a long breath, then switched his phone on. He’d been switching it off fully more and more recently, as if it was a tether to the outside world that scared him. Well, there was no use trying to pretend otherwise. It _was_ a tether to the outside world that scared him.

Slowly, he opened his contacts and tapped on ‘Home’.

The grainy sound of the phone dialling set him on edge for a second, then –

“Hello?”

His mother’s voice. All it took was one word before he broke down in tears again.

Before she even knew what was wrong, Marcy was already shushing him down the phone.

“You’re alright, just breathe, Patrick…what’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Patrick gulped and let his head fall back on the headboard.

“No, I don’t think I am.”

And so he talked. Three years of missed calls and cold shoulders and ignoring and arguments were laid out like a deck of cards in front of Patrick and Marcy Brewer, explanation after explanation and apology after apology shuffling and shaping them into something that looked a little more discernible. Into something that looked like _Patrick._

He explained everything about the dark side of his job, about the scam, about just how lonely he now realised he had been for the past three years. He explained what happened with Rachel, and heard in turn about how Rachel had been since she came home. And how she was happy.

And – _screw it, she might as well know_ – he told her about David. About the career he built to guard and isolate himself from all sorts of terrifying truths, only for David to start peeling back the layers of him as soon as he got to Schitt’s Creek. About how that had scared him too much to confront, and now he had ruined everything.

“You haven’t, sweet boy,” Marcy said, and _God,_ Patrick had missed being talked to like a kid. “You both need time to adjust. It sounds like you both misunderstand each other.”

Patrick laughed. “You could say that. Things have been nice, but it’s just hard, you know? I’m trying to let myself back into a world that thinks I don’t want it. It’s been messy from the start with David.”

“Not everyone has the luxury of starting on solid ground,” Marcy said. “You’re right, there’s mess there. And I suppose what you can choose to do now stamp it down or sweep it up.”

Patrick nodded. No more stamping down. No more _can we start over_ without pulling out the core of the problem.

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Right. Now I don’t know about you, but you sound like you need another cup of tea.”

Patrick smiled, warmth blooming in his chest. “On it. And when I’m back, you can tell me all about Aunt Paula’s wedding.”

“Oh, which one? There have been _two_ since you moved away. We have a lot to catch up on, sweet boy.”

****

The moment David walked through the door, he could tell Moira knew there was something up. Her hearing was uncommonly good. She had been fussing over some new design, her sewing machine whirring, but when David closed the door behind him and trudged into the kitchen the noise slowed to a stop. He heard his mother shuffle to get a better look at David as he made one – then, on second thoughts, two – cups of green tea.

The living room was warmly lit, the fire blazing, when he came in. He zeroed in on the fabrics draped over the sewing machine and gasped quietly.

“You’re going ahead with the sweater?”

Moira tutted. “Even if you’ve been preoccupied with your new beau this past month, it would be rather unsportsmanlike of me to retire a project, would it not?”

David smiled and set their teas down on the desk. “Interesting choice of words there, Mother. If you’re trying to get me to talk about Patrick, it won’t work.”

“Oh, far be it from me to prod at fresh wounds, but I can sense something muddying the waters here,” Moira said, reaching for her tea and taking a sip through pursed lips. “You’ve seemed so happy with each other this week. What happened?”

“I just…” David broke off and sighed, watching as Moira returned to the task at hand and carefully lined up two sleeve parts under the needle. “I’m scared this won’t work. I’m scared he’s not going to settle. I mean, he couldn’t even grasp the concept of me asking for help today! Who does that?”

Sensing David wasn’t done, Moira just hummed and let the needle course over the sleeve edges, binding them together.

“I don’t know if I have what it takes to make this place worth it for him,” David said.

“Is that entirely your responsibility, dear?” Moira said. She took the finished sleeve out and started on the other.

“Well…no, but…it always helps to have people you can rely on. Like you and Jocelyn when we got here.”

Moira smiled at the mention of her best friend, before her face sobered again.

“Did I ever tell you about the first time your father and I fought?”

David scoffed. “Patrick and I aren’t _married._ We’ve had a thing for a week.”

Moira raised her eyebrow in that infuriating way as though she knew something David didn’t, and ignored him as she continued. “It was before you or Alexis were born. I’d gotten the most terrible review, the worst one I’d ever had. It cost me a job I’d been working towards for what felt like forever. Like someone else we know, I felt like I’d lost all that I valued most in the world. Unfortunately, it was I who caused the tensions between your father and myself after that. I would say the most regrettable things and lock myself away. Rather like –”

“Someone else we know, yes,” David said irritably. “I get it, you’re the Patrick here.” But he wasn’t mad. She was getting somewhere.

“And do you know what your father did, on the night we’d fought the most?”

David was silent.

“He sat outside the closet door all night and waited for me to come out. He didn’t say anything, he didn’t try and prise me away. He just waited. He was asleep in the morning when I emerged.” Moira stopped trying to concentrate on the sewing and sat back. “My conclusion being, David, that your father knew why I was acting the way I did, even if it upset him. I don't think, in the big picture, it is you that needs help.”

David shifted in his seat. “So…you’re suggesting I just, what, wait until Patrick comes around? What if I think I deserve an apology?”

Moira smiled again in that frustratingly knowing way. “If he’s anything like the person I have become acquainted with this week, then it may come around sooner than you think,” she said. Then she turned to David in full and looked him in the eye. “You may not always know it, or may doubt its truth, but…you see him. For all that he is.”

David chewed his lip and pulled his sleeves over his hands. Deep down, he knew that was true. His mother was right. But sometimes, seeing someone was just as difficult a truth as being seen. It meant facing up to the ugliest parts of someone, confronting the parts of them that irritate and confuse and bore and upset you, then holding them by the face and saying, _I choose you._

“I’m afraid I may have to call a hold to the production of this sweater for several weeks while I consult the textiles teacher at Elmdale College about the costumery for our upcoming show,” Moira said, folding up the two sleeves she had made and switching off the sewing machine lamp.

Ah, yes. That time of year again.

“What is it going to be this year?”

“It was a narrow battle between _Cabaret_ and _Great Comet of 1812…Great Comet_ won, in the end, to my pleasant surprise.”

David was ready to sit back on the cushions and listen to Moira talk him through the script and composition of next summer’s show, but they were interrupted by a knock on the door.

David frowned. It was darkening outside quickly, the wind picking up fast. David drained the rest of his tea and popped into the kitchen to boil some more water for another before opening the door.

On the other side of the door, hands shoved deep in jean pockets and looking utterly emotionally drained, stood Patrick.

“Patrick? Are you okay?”

_Do you need help?_

“I’m sorry, David.”

_Yes._

David stood back to let Patrick inside, closing the cold and dark out as quickly as he could.

And because people help each other, the first thing David did was go back into the kitchen to set out another mug.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, I hit a huge block with this one! Thankfully, I've got some ideas for the second half now and shall be posting them whenever over the next couple of weeks.

Patrick had originally gone to David’s with a clear idea about why he was there, but as soon as David sat him down in the kitchen and grabbed two herbal tea bags from the tin on top of the cupboard Patrick felt his throat clam up and his nerves flush with something that felt horribly like embarrassment.

See, it was one thing to say you were sorry. It was much harder to say you were sorry _for_ something. To actually seat the word in your own experiences instead of borrowing it from time.

Patrick tried to ground himself in his seat, planting his feet firmly on the ground and flexing his toes inside his shoes. It didn’t feel right. The kitchen wasn’t small, but there was steam billowing from the sink after a recent wash that felt like it had enveloped the ceiling and the hot yellow lights were just left of comforting. Patrick breathed out when the kettle clicked and David was done with the tea, then again when he touched a single finger to Patrick’s chin and said, “want to go upstairs?”

Patrick nodded, his throat tight. He took hold of the mug that David had placed down next to him on the table and followed him up.

Immediately, the muted colour palette of David’s room and the smooth, cool breeze coming in through his window soothed Patrick’s nerves. Though still distracted in his distress, he felt a soft something tugging at his core, whispering _this._ In a world that had him flinching and putting up his defences round every corner, David was an anchor. The Patrick of last month would never have dreamed of admitting something like that, but here he was. And he wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world.

The weight of that truth hit him suddenly, an unexpected blow from the side, and he put his mug down quickly to grip the corner of David’s bedside table and break down. David was there in an instant, his long, sweater-padded arms drawing Patrick in and making him small. Patrick remembered that he’d closed the door behind him, so he let himself cry louder.

“I’m sorry,” Patrick managed between sobs, as soon as he could. “I’m sorry for bringing all the worst parts of me out all the time. I’m sorry for not helping you. I want to help you, I _want_ to be invested in this but I _can’t –”_

And then he was crying again, an endless stream that he knew David was pretending not to notice as it soaked into his shirt. He expected David to cringe away from it, but David just pulled him over to the bed and sat them both down.

“It’s okay,” David murmured. “It’s okay. Just let it out.”

“I don’t want to be like this anymore.”

“I know.”

“But I’m sick of starting over.”

“I know, I know.”

David’s fingertips tightened on Patrick’s shoulders. He rocked him in slow, short rocks from side to side until the crying stopped and there was a gentle amount of rain spitting in from the window. David manoeuvred himself out of their position and got up to close it, while Patrick curled himself into the warm spot he’d left. When David turned back around, he smiled fondly and handed Patrick the bottle of water sitting on his bedside table.

“Come on, up you get,” he said. “You’d better drink at least half of that bottle.”

Despite himself, Patrick smiled. And he felt something inside him split and curve open and upwards too; it was as though he was filling with a cool salve, the relief of stress after a good cry.

“Back in New York, I don’t think I cried for three years,” Patrick said, the realisation only half-formed as the words came out. “I just…switched off. In an environment like that, you kind of have to.”

“Why did you do it, then?” David said. It wasn’t an unkind tone, but it reminded Patrick of how his mother used to question him when he’d come home muddied and bruised after roughing with the boys on the football pitch.

“I think I mentioned something about walls earlier,” Patrick remembered. The afternoon was a blur that felt like a pang inside him now. “That was all it was, one big wall. I thought if I kept going up, then I wouldn’t have to face the real world. I could make more excuses for myself.”

David looked down at him. “You did all that with no guarantee that you would actually become wealthy?”

Patrick scoffed. “Well, when you put it like that…”

They both laughed half-heartedly, and David pulled Patrick closer. He sipped on his water as he thought about what he needed to get out next.

“I guess that just goes to show how desperate I was to get away from myself,” he almost whispered, as though he was telling himself a secret. “It was like when I came here for the first time. I kept wanting to make fresh starts. Even with stupid things, like redecorating my apartment. Rachel used to hate that.”

“Rachel’s the –”

“The ex-fiancée, yeah,” Patrick reminded him.

David shifted himself upwards a bit to grab his mug.

“From what I’m hearing, it sounds like you don’t how to ‘start over’ without putting it in the most literal sense possible,” David said.

He’d got it in one. “Sounds about right.”

“Did I ever tell you about the time I ran away from home when I was eighteen?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“We’d been here five years, but I still didn’t feel like I belonged here. Me and Stevie’s thing had ended and she was mad at me for something, Alexis was too busy getting suspended, and things were still a bit raw with Mom and Dad. I got a Myspace account and got back in touch with all my old middle school friends, then ended up starting what would probably be best categorised as an online relationship with one of their new college classmates.”

“Bet that went down well,” Patrick said without thinking, and almost immediately regretted it. But David was used to the barbs and edges of him now, and sometimes it felt like David was the only person who could take that side of his personality and deliver his own dose in return.

“Before _you_ become one to talk about failed New York relationships, let me explain,” David retorted, pulling Patrick closer into his side. Patrick hid a private smile in David’s shoulder and let him continue. “So. Sebastien Raine, this new friend, started sending me things. Flowers in the post, calling local takeouts and getting them to deliver to my door. It was the money that I appreciated the most. For a while, especially back then, it was nice to be pitied, as pathetic as that sounds.”

Patrick nodded. He understood that.

“Anyway, all these friends were talking about meeting up in New York for the weekend. I’d met them once before in Toronto and got super excited to see Sebastien. About a day before the trip, he said something that encouraged me to dig into my feelings and I started venting about my entire situation, how I hated losing the money, everything. He ended up asking me to come live with him in his new studio apartment after the weekend was done. I knew my parents would never let me, so I just packed a bag and split in Roland’s old truck.”

David was silent for a minute. Patrick couldn’t tell what kind of reminiscing it was.

“And then?” he prodded gently.

David sighed. “And _then,_ when I got there, there wasn’t a trace of them. I tried calling Sebastien and all the others on the phone they’d given me, but it sounded like none of them had any signal. I logged into Myspace in an internet café and found that they were all off on someone’s luxury yacht somewhere. Sebastien had given me the wrong dates and times.”

Patrick turned himself towards David and hugged him close. “I’m sorry.”

“It was years ago,” David said, and there was sadness tinged at the edges of it that sounded as though it could have been deeper if David had made different decisions.

Patrick didn’t need David to explain how he got back, but somehow he ended up lying down and letting David’s smooth honeyed voice wash over him as he told him about all the other times he’d tried to get away from this place. The first time when he literally tried to ride away on a bike, the second time when he’d been taken in by the Amish aged fourteen and they tried to marry him to their same-aged daughter, the many times he’d had to apologise to Roland about the truck before he would finally forgive him.

And in the stories, Patrick realised that something he’d been missing with David had finally slotted into place: common ground. They might have been in drastically different seasons of their lives, but they’d both seen what it was to live like the other. Same book, different pages.

The sky was completely dark now. The clock on David’s bedside table beeped for 10pm. They were both lying down, chest to back, David pressed up behind Patrick and skating a finger up and down the light hairs on his arm.

“I’m really sorry about what I said today,” Patrick said. “It was shitty of me. There’s nothing wrong with you asking for help. I promise I’m gonna do better.”

David leaned in and mumbled a “thank you” against Patrick’s hair before kissing him there softly. “And I’m sorry for not being more accommodating,” he said. “If you ever want to rant about anything, even how much you miss Kona Nigari water, I promise I’ll never get tired.”

Patrick whined at the mention of the water. “Oh, I miss it _so_ much,” he said.

“Right?” David sat up, crossing his legs. Patrick mirrored the position. “And did you ever have those little pastries in New York, the ones near 59th with the –”

“The praline? Yes,” Patrick sighed.

“They still make those?”

“Yes!”

David and Patrick share a wide-eyed look, one that felt giddy and levelled at the same time. They got themselves comfortable, ordered a pizza and traded stories about the things the places they used to go, the things they used to do and buy and see – the _good_ things – and Patrick felt his world unclench its fists.

Eventually, Patrick let go of his posture and let himself slump comfortably, his legs reaching out to wrap around David’s sides. David gave him an encouraging look and Patrick kept shuffling forward until his legs were crossed around David and they were sat with their chests flush against each other, wrapped in a hug that should have felt awkward yet really didn’t.

“I’ve missed you,” David breathed against Patrick’s neck, “and I can’t work out why.”

Patrick’s eyes stung. “I think you’re starting to see a version of me that was meant to be here all along.”

At that, David wasted no time in lifting his head and capturing Patrick’s lips in a deep kiss. He was surrounded by more warmth than in longer than he could remember, seated in David’s lap and closer to him than he’d ever been. He could hear some muffled music from what he assumed was Alexis’ room and the distant conversations of David’s parent’s downstairs, and for a wild moment he imagined that he was home from college with David for the holidays. It would have been so easy. He imagined never going to Harvard, instead meeting David at a time when their paths could have crossed just as easily, figuring things out much quicker. He imagined his early twenties being warmed by the glint of David’s eyes when he smiles rather than the blinding glass of his pristine top-floor apartment windows.

He sunk himself further into David’s arms and deepened the kiss, until David was moving his hands down Patrick’s sides and laying him on his back. He lost track of time as they kissed, hands roaming and clothes being draped over the nearby chair, and it wasn’t until late into the night that Patrick thought about it again.

“What time is it?” he whispered to David’s half-asleep back. He was still buzzing, every nerve alight, golden and peaceably giddy as he drew a featherlight finger over David’s shoulder.

“S’after midnight,” David mumbled. “You should stay.”

Patrick settled himself down with a sigh, pulling David closer to him until they were spooning.

He was going to stay, alright.

***

The rest of the autumn passed with something that Patrick actually dared to hope was an upwards trend of recovery. He threw himself into helping David with the store and took each day step by step. Every night he’d sit with his bedside lamp on low and read one of the books in Ray’s library (he’d been surprised to find that Ray’s upstairs living area actually had three bedrooms, not just two, only one of them had been converted into a little book nook). His bedroom grew more comforting with every night he stayed there, and he made sure to talk to Ray or David or his mom every time he had a bad memory or woke up thinking it was that very first night again and he was being rushed out of his apartment.

Throughout all the stability, he still couldn’t help thinking about that email he’d received a couple of weeks ago from Weston, his old friend. But by the end of the month, he hadn’t received another, and resolved to put it out of his mind for good by deactivating his old account and starting with a new one that didn’t have his work email in.

On that same day, Stevie invited him and David to a karaoke night at the Wobbly Elm. After a long week of handling all the tedious manual sides of getting the store together, they’d decided to spend the day in bed at David’s and were half asleep, warm and undressed when they got the call.

“We’re going in an hour,” Stevie said over the speakerphone. “I know you’re probably both cemented into David’s bedsheets right now, but that’s nothing new. Get your ass up, rich boys.”

David scoffed at the high school nickname that Stevie had recently started flinging at Patrick as well. “You’re just jealous we have something else to talk about that you don’t.”

“Mhm…sounds like you two have been really _busy_ talking.”

“We’ll be there, Stevie,” Patrick called, his words muffled by the back of David’s neck.

Apparently satisfied, she hung up abruptly and David twisted around immediately. “You sounded awfully decisive about going tonight.”

Patrick shrugged, already thinking about what he’s going to sing and how many shots it’ll take to gee him up when he gets there. “I like singing. Haven’t done it in a while.”

David looked at him oddly for a moment like he was working something out, then shook his head lightly. “Fair enough. We should probably move at some point, though.”

Patrick hummed through his nose. “But do we have to, though?”

David smiled, reaching round the back of Patrick’s head to squeeze his shoulder. As he had done a thousand times over the past couple of weeks, he melted into the touch and let David take the lead. Take the stress away.

“No, we _really_ have to get up now,” David said, but Patrick really felt like he was cemented in this bed, as Stevie had said.

“No…”

“Up!” David yanked the sheet away and Patrick yelped.

“Bastard!” Patrick scrambled up, grabbed his shirt and pulled it on. “Fine. I’ll go home and get dressed, then meet you outside the motel to walk there.”

“You have a car, Patrick.”

Patrick frowned for a second. “…Oh, yeah. I guess I – yeah, that’s – I do.”

 _Do you?_ some random voice in his head insisted. He’d not really touched it since he left it in front of the motel, climbing out of the last vestige of his old life like a second skin.

And once that strange mix of emotions cleared out, it was replaced with the gentle, moving shock of realising that he’d just called Ray’s “home”. David must have noticed the slew of emotions coursing across Patrick’s face, his rapid blinks and the downturned smile, because he crossed the room and cupped Patrick’s face in his hands.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Go home, I’ll meet you soon. Okay?”

He gave Patrick one last kiss and showed him to the door. Once he’d returned to Ray’s – _home_ – he put his old clothes in the wash and picked out some of the simpler items he owned; a black shirt and fitted jeans. After working as a business consultant and having David pay him for two months how, he actually had a working salary again. He decided he’d finally buy David a drink for the first time tonight.

Once David, Stevie and Twyla had been rallied, they walked together to the Wobbly Elm. Patrick passed his car on the way there and watched Twyla drag her finger along the edge of it admiringly. He thought about taking it to Bob’s Garage tomorrow.

“So karaoke, huh?” David said, lacing his fingers through Patrick’s as the little bar came into view. “D’you reckon you might manage to convince me to duet with you?”

“Believe me, you do _not_ want that to happen,” Stevie interrupted. “He’d need a deadly amount of polar bear shots to say yes at the first ask. I speak from experience.”

“Well, we’ll see what happens,” Patrick said. As they opened the door to a full bar, he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of disappointment. He’d had an idea in the back of his head since earlier in the day to sing for David, and he still planned to host an open mic as a marketing tactic for the store, but it hadn’t come together this time.

David made an affronted noise when he saw his mother already in the bar, sipping on a Bloody Mary and surrounded by the rest of the Jazzagals.

“If I knew the company would be dead, I wouldn’t have come in here tonight,” he called out to them. The women made a show of booing the younger folk and Ronnie swatted an arm out at David.

“Could say the same about you, kid,” Ronnie said. “You’d better not hog that mic like you always do. We’re cutting you off after three drinks.”

“Make it four, and I promise not to sing any Mariah,” David said.

Patrick settled himself into the bar. He got out his wallet and bought two gins for himself and David, feeling an even mix of unease and excitement when he handed over the money. The bar was so packed that it took him a minute to scan the crowd for his - boyfriend? Partner? His David? -, in which time he caught the sound of a guitar tuning up nearby.

Cross-legged on the edge of the stage, Twyla was sat with a beautiful acoustic in her hands fiddling with its pegs. He asked the bartender to keep an eye on his drinks and approached her.

“I didn’t know you played,” he said. Twyla looked up and smiled.

“Since I was five,” she said. “My mom’s boyfriend used to say that if you didn’t play ‘til your fingers bled then you weren’t playing at all, so I got really good really fast. And hey, the callouses on my fingertips mean I can carry hot plates better at work!”

Patrick was still scraping together the mental literacy to process that when Twyla asked, “So you’re singing tonight? What’re you going to do?”

Patrick looked up at the stage, the microphone shining under the Edison bulb lights. “Oh, you know, I just thought I’d…” _Help’s there when you need it._ “Actually, I haven’t got a clue. Would it...would it be okay if I borrowed your guitar after you?”

“Of course – wait, no! I have a much better idea.”

Patrick squatted down beside her, running his hand along the instrument. “Go ahead?”

“Why don’t we sing something together? It’ll take the pressure off, and I think it’ll be nice.”

Patrick feels a warm rush of affection for Twyla. It was so much more relieving to think of the karaoke like this; like the fun that it was meant to be. “That sounds great, Twyla. I’ll go give David his drink then we can think about what we’re going to sing.”

And they did just that until the time came for the first few acts to perform. There were some that used the beat-up old karaoke machine that the Wobbly Elm provided, some – horrifyingly – went acapella, and the Jazzagals set their own pace with their pre-rehearsed numbers. Eventually, it was Twyla and Patrick’s turn, and suddenly the room looked a lot fuller from up on the raised ledge of a stage.

“Hi, everyone! You all know who I am, but this is Patrick, for those of you who haven’t met him yet. He’s going to be singing with me tonight.”

Patrick caught David’s eye in the crowd and drew as much strength as possible from the warm, encouraging smile he got in return.

Twyla strummed the first few notes, and suddenly Patrick’s harmony seemed to come more naturally than he’d expected for a song he learned half an hour ago. God, he missed the feeling of this. He missed the small performing spaces of his hometown, the little pockets of joy he would create from the open mics in his school auditorium or the church at Christmas or the bar around the corner. David never took his eyes off him, his arms tucked into his sides, hugging into his oversized white cardigan. Patrick smiled at him as often as he could.

They were met with rapturous applause when they finished, but the person who seemed moved beyond everyone else, surprisingly, was Moira. She was staring at Patrick and Twyla curiously, as though she was working something out. Patrick, however, didn’t notice. He was too busy making a narrow track towards her son, who was waiting with arms already open. Patrick fell into them as easily as he had every day for the past month.

“I could let you convince me to sing with you, but I think I like hearing my boyfriend’s voice by itself,” David whispered in the minimal distance between them.

It was like fireworks alight in Patrick’s nerves to hear it. He smiled into a kiss, then another, until he and David were an incoherent back-and-forth of kisses and calling each other boyfriend. Stevie threatened to break them apart with a pint of beer thrown on their heads, so they ducked out of the bar quickly with everyone else and followed the trail to the Rose’s for the afterparty.

Johnny and Alexis were in the kitchen working on a platter of Mexican food and setting up the music when everyone came in. Once the party was in full swing, Patrick took a moment to himself to survey the scene. It was short-lived, however, when he felt a tap on his shoulder.

“Moira,” he said, turning to the right. Moira was mirroring his position, looking out at the small gathering drinking and dancing as though she hadn’t just tried to get his attention. “Have you had a good night?”

“More than satisfactory, thank you,” she said. She looked at Patrick pointedly. “Though I must say, the peak of the night was that enrapturing performance by dear Twyla and yourself.”

Patrick grinned. “Thank you.”

“There was something about…the enthralling chemistry of your voices that made me wonder how better they can be purposed in this town’s creative endeavours,” she said.

“Uh…yeah. Sorry, I’m not following.”

Moira clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “The performance, Pat-rick! _Great Comet?_ We’re currently in the throes of searching for the perfect leads, and if I didn’t know better I’d say we had our very own Pierre and Natasha ready and raring to go.”

Patrick took a sip of his beer. He used to be in every play his school put on, and had hoped the same thing was available at Harvard until he realised the president of the theatre society had only wanted people with actual credentials in his performances. Performing tonight had set off an itch in him that he hadn’t realised needed scratching. Perhaps this is what he needed. To make a fool of himself, to invest time in a character.

“I’ll do it,” he said.

Moira breathed a sigh of relief beside him. “Oh, thank goodness. That’s how I convinced Twyla to do it, I said you’d already signed on to play Pierre.”

“Well, I’m glad I –” Patrick stopped himself when he caught onto something Moira had said before, and tried to catch her before she milled back into the crowd. “Moira – wait, Moira, did you say ‘leads’?”

***

The next morning, Patrick woke up on the Rose’s couch with David behind him, spooning. The side of his face was stuck to a paper place and his mouth tasted like furry soap. He squinted against the living room light that had been left on, propelling himself up to go and fill the kettle for any stragglers. Alexis was sat up at the kitchen table on her phone, looking surprisingly put together.

“Morning, Alexis,” he said groggily as he entered the room.

Alexis looked up and waved a finger at him. “You’re up early. You were scream-singing _You’re The Voice_ with Stevie on the coffee table last night. That’s sleep-in-til-midday behaviour.”

Patrick groaned, knocking the kettle against the sink as he aimed for the streaming tap. “God, was I? I have literally no recollection of that.”

“Mm, you might when I show you this video.”

“What – Alexis, no,” he whined, reaching out for her phone as though that would magically delete the video.

“Alexis _yes,”_ she said, grinning wickedly as she held the phone out to Patrick with the video on. He grabbed across the table for it, and she shrieked and stood up. He ended up chasing her around the table for it, laughing as he tried to snatch the evidence from her hand.

“It’s no use, Ted has the video too and – andI’mgonnauploadittoInstagram – Patrick!”

“What kind of ungodly noises are these at fuck o’clock in the morning?” Stevie trudged into the kitchen, followed closely by David. Both of them resembled zombies. Patrick grabbed more mugs from the cupboard.

“Alexis torturing me with my embarrassing antics of last night,” Patrick said.

“What embarrassing antics?” Stevie said, “I only remember you standing in the corner with Moira.”

“Oh, you’ve got a surprise coming, Stevie – ”

Alexis was interrupted by a knock at the door. Then another, harsher. Then the bell.

Patrick, closest to the kitchen door, went out into the hallway.

“Alright, I’m coming,” he grumbled as the knocking, sounding vaguely familiar, got louder and faster.

He opened the front door impatiently and had to rub his eyes like an actual cartoon to process who was standing in front of him, his blonde hair and backpack and thin-lipped smile exactly as Patrick remembered.

“Weston?”

“Patrick,” he said, his voice relieved. “You deleted your email. I couldn’t find you anywhere. No one could get into contact with you.”

Patrick frowned at his old friend. He hadn’t been expecting to hear from him past that one email and now here he was, standing at his door and looking as cheerful as though he’d just come back from a walking holiday. He would ask him how he got there, but knowing Weston’s freakishly good computer skills he probably tracked his phone down in some way or another

“Wha – but why? Why would anyone need to get into contact with me?” Patrick said, probably more irritably than necessary. David, Alexis and Stevie had crept out into the hallway to eavesdrop.

Weston stared at him like he had two heads. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear. The investigation on Endcom closed. They’re going to get us our shit back.”

The feeling inside Patrick’s chest at those words was probably the most indescribable thing he’d ever felt. It was so overwhelming that it forced him into the very present, stripped back with shock until all he could focus on was the basics.

“I…you should probably come in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The gorgeous rendition of _This Will Be Our Year_ in this fic was sung by Lowland Hum! You can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6zTiuTTM70


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The gang go back to New York and Patrick makes a decision about his future.

If someone had approached the Patrick Brewer and Weston Smith of a year ago and told them what they were doing right now, neither would have believed them.

This time last year, the two of them were shouting down the phone to their usual chauffeured car company, enquiring not-so-politely after the whereabouts of the limousine they’d ordered to take them to Mitchell Rales’ Thanksgiving party. Patrick could still remember the weight of the bottle of 1995 Krug in his hand, remember the ache in his wrist as he stood on the side of the road waiting for his ride.

If someone had told those tired, lonely boys that they would be sat around a yellow-clothed table on rounded wooden chairs in a Mexicana-style kitchen, being served tea and BLTs by a hungover receptionist in plaid pyjamas, they would have probably looked them up and down and given them a pity dollar.

But that’s where they were. Weston, clearly starving from his journey, was eating a lot more than Patrick, his plate piled with sandwiches with two mugs of tea in front of him. Patrick sipped his tea and waited patiently for Weston to elaborate on his reasons for being here, occasionally shooting David the odd glance to try and communicate anything wordlessly. Either David was too tired or they weren’t quite on that level yet, but the awkward silence remained.

Finally, _finally,_ Weston spoke.

“D’you remember that guy who came in at the start of last year to do some observations and we were all kinda suspicious of him?” he said, his already thick accent almost unintelligible over his mouthful of sandwich.

“What, that Norton something?”

“Nathaniel Norton, yeah. It was him that started it all.”

Patrick sighed. “I thought it might have been.”

“Anyway, he’s been arrested. They’ve retrieved as much of our stuff as they can, shoved it back in our old suites.” Patrick and Weston had been neighbours in their fancy apartment block. They really had been in it together, and remembering it almost brought Patrick to tears with nostalgia and fondness for his friend.

Weston swallowed and drank half his tea in one gulp. “Anyway, I know it’s a bit creepy me turning up here, but you know what I’m like. I got worried something had happened ‘til I saw your phone’s IP crop up on a _very_ weak signal in northern Ontario.”

“Mkay, our signal’s not _that_ bad,” David interjected. Weston looked up.

“Shit, sorry, guys! I just waltzed into your house without introducing myself. I’m Weston, I used to work with Patrick, I got fucked over just as bad. Well, probably worse, eh?” He added with a light punch to Patrick’s arm.

“Hey, we lost the same, which was everything,” Patrick countered.

“Ah, but I had more to lose, didn’t I?” Weston said with a wink, leaning back. He finished off his two teas and sighed contentedly, licking the last of the ketchup off his fingers. “God, I missed normal food. Mum’s been making all my autumn favourites. Remember when we got invited to that dinner party and the main course was literally a bag of violet-scented air blown into our faces?”

The whole table laughed at that.

“Oh my God, that reminds me of New Year’s in the Hamptons that one time, David,” Alexis said. “Do you remember when Adelina didn’t make us dinner because she said we’d be eating loads that night and all we got was, like, foam on a plate or whatever they thought a ‘fun kids meal’ was?”

David groaned and clapped a hand to his forehead. “Don’t. That was literally the hungriest I’ve ever been in my entire life. Literally nothing has tasted better than the In-N-Out we had the next morning.”

Soon, everyone was swapping stories about the ridiculous things they got up to at the height of their wealth. Thoroughly entertained, Stevie leaned back and listened, smirking as though she knew something about life that they didn’t.

After a while, Patrick and Weston fell quiet. They shared a look and half-smiled, knowing they had the option not to talk about this stuff as though it was in the past anymore. That kind of life was still there, if they wanted it. Weston pulled out his phone and showed Patrick an email.

“Remember Larry from New Jersey? The one who had nothing to do with any of this? He’s offered to take us to New York for a week or two to get everything sorted out. He can get his plane here from basically whenever I say go.”

Patrick stared at the email, detailing a very generous offer from one of their old mutual friends to use his vehicle and stay in one of his hotels for as long as necessary to get their affairs in order. He tried to think about going back, tried to think about the Christmas parties and the champagne and the experimental menus, but all he could think about was the warmth of David’s arm strewn across him as he woke up. He tried to think about the floating, the flying, the detachment of his old life, but all that came to mind was the gentle heaviness of being pinned down, being grounded.

Even so, he knew he had to go back to New York, for legal reasons if nothing else. And curiosity. And even if he couldn’t bring it to mind, he knew there was _something_ nibbling at the corners of his mind that felt like the keen greediness with which he had once chased down life.

He looked at David. David gave him a look that told Patrick it was entirely his decision.

“Get in touch with him as soon as possible,” Patrick said. “I can get a bag ready in ten.”

Weston hopped out of the kitchen to make his call, and David cleared his throat a couple of times until Patrick turned around.

“Are you okay there, David?”

David shrugged, clearly feigning nonchalance. “I just think I’ll need a little longer than ten minutes to pack for a week-long trip to New York, is all.”

Patrick smiled. The cheeky little shit.

“Oh?” he said, wrapping his arms around David’s waist. “And what makes you think you’re invited, hmm?” But he was nuzzling his face into David’s neck as he spoke, so his point was completely useless.

“Um, excuse me?” Alexis said, breaking David and Patrick out of their embrace. “I’m obviously coming too. I want to see what kind of goodies our little button used to have lying around.”

Stevie grunted as she took her feet down off the table, grabbing her coat. “Be back in five with my bag. Don’t think you’re leaving without me.”

She brushed past Weston on the way, who came back in with a relieved smile on his face.

“Larry should have the jet at the strip in Elmdale in forty-five minutes.”

Alexis and David shrieked as though he’d said forty-five seconds and bolted upstairs to pack. Weston frowned at Patrick questioningly, and Patrick could only shrug.

“Room for three more?”

***

**12:19 PM**

**Now Playing: Run by Snow Patrol**

**2:48 5:55**

⏮️⏸️⏩

**Swipe to unlock screen**

As soon as they boarded the plane, Alexis called Twyla to tell her what was happening, Stevie made a beeline for the free drinks and snacks and David snapped an eye mask on and told everyone to shut the fuck up. Patrick and Weston were the only ones awake, sharing a set of earphones and staring out the window.

“Remember when we listened to this the night after our first big losses?” Weston said. “We both wanted to quit so badly.”

Patrick chuckled at the memory of them crying down the phone to Weston’s mother together. “What were we, twenty? Twenty-one?”

“Yeah, twenty-one,” Weston said. “Lifetimes ago.”

It certainly felt that way. Patrick could barely stand to think about that time now. He wished he could go back and shake them both, tell them to nip it in the bud before they got any further. Tell Weston to go back to England and take over his dad’s artisan sausage business like he’d always planned before he got his Harvard scholarship.

“So who are these guys?” Weston said, gesturing at the Roses and Stevie doing their own thing. “They rent you a room out, or…?”

“Well, Stevie was the first one I met. I stayed in her motel for a while before Ray rented me a room.”

“Is that Ray?” Weston said, pointing at David who was snoring loudly.

“No!” Patrick said, a little too loudly. He tried not to laugh at the thought. “God, no. That’s David. He’s –”

“And who’s _that?”_ Weston said, turning to Alexis then turning back to Patrick with a suggestive wiggle of his eyebrows, clearly assuming there was something there.

Patrick laughed nervously. “That’s, um, that’s Alexis. David’s sister.”

Weston nodded. Patrick had been about to tell him about David, but the moment felt like it passed.

Then, miraculously, another one seated itself right in front of him when Weston paused their music and said, “Go on, then. Tell me one thing you’ve learned about yourself before we go back to it all.”

_First time you’ve said it out loud. Go._

“You want to say them at the same time?” Weston said.

Patrick shrugged. “Sure.”

“Three…two…one. I really fucking hated that job.”

“I’m gay.”

Weston looked at Patrick, his face almost apologetic. “Damn, I should have let you go by yourself.”

“It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” Patrick placated. “It didn’t feel like you spoke over me or anything.”

Weston put a hand on Patrick’s shoulder. “I’m proud of you, man. I hope it brought you some peace to figure it out.”

Patrick snorted. “Was I that obvious?”

“I mean, this is coming from the recipient of 100% of your 3am texts about how you just didn’t feel right, so maybe I’m biased.”

Patrick smiled, wishing once again he could do anything to talk to his younger self and tell him to hang in there.

“And, uh, David over there, he’s…he’s my boyfriend.”

“Boyfriend? As in, put-a-label-on-it, serious boyfriend?”

Patrick’s chest fluttered just from thinking about it. “I guess.”

“Wow.” Weston looked at David, then looked out of the window. “So do you know what’s going to happen now?”

“What, with David? We’re fine –”

“No, I mean what if you decide to stay in New York?”

“I…don’t know.”

Staying in New York would be easy. He would have his entire apartment there, everything inside it, his – oh God, his AquaSymphony shower and its 30 settings, all still working.

“You said you hated your job?” Patrick said to cut off his own thoughts.

“I…yeah, I guess I did say that out loud. I think it became less of a job and more of a standard I’d go in and hold myself to every day. I used to schedule every single minute of my day and if I didn’t live up to it, if I was slightly less productive than I could have been, I’d beat myself up. It was self-sabotage. I was giving myself reasons to hate myself so I’d try and do better.”

Patrick breathed out. There was a reason they were pretty much best friends. It was as though Weston had just dipped into his mind and pulled out the thoughts he didn’t even know he had the power to articulate.

“So what are you going to do instead?”

“I mean – I’m excited to get everything back, I really am,” Weston said, with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Maybe I’ll just get myself sorted when I get there and go from there. I have more than enough to keep me going in New York without a job for the rest of my life.”

They fell silent after that. The conversation had started to feel like they were cutting out a bruise, so they put their earphones back in and didn’t speak until the plane landed with a less-than-smooth clunk in JFK. 

When they got off the plane, shivering against the late afternoon breeze, Patrick slid an arm around David’s waist and kissed him on the cheek.

“Missed you up there,” he said softly.

“You know I was on the same plane, right?”

“Yeah, but you were practically knocked unconscious the entire time.”

David laughed and bumped his nose against Patrick’s gently before kissing him. When they broke apart, Patrick turned to his left and saw Weston giving him a small smile before turning on his heel and guiding everyone to the airport, his ‘90s, curtain-banged mop of blonde hair whipping to and fro in the wind. Patrick once again felt that warm buzz of reconciliation he’d had when he told his mom about David.

They got a taxi to one of the many hotels that Larry owned and were all ready to head to their rooms but were instead directed to the foyer, where several people were waiting for them. David, Alexis and Stevie bid them goodbye and Patrick and Weston were left standing in the foyer, looking for someone that was apparently meant to be meeting them here.

“Mr. Brewer? Mr. Smith?” a short, black-haired man said, standing up from one of the wicker chairs at the side of the room to shake their hands. “I’m Mr. Nguyen, your auditor. I’ve been working on making this as easy for you as possible, so I’ll just let you have a seat and you can talk to Ellis over here. They’ll be your counsellor for the next week or so while you get your affairs in order.”

“Counsellor? Why would we need a counsellor?”

“Because you’ve been through a tumultuous couple of months, and I’m here to make sure the decision you make is one hundred percent certain,” Ellis interjected, and Patrick’s gaze was directed to quite possibly the most unprofessional looking person he’d ever seen in New York. He’d been expecting Ellis to be wearing business attire like the rest of the team, but they were lounging in the chair wearing floral-print dungarees and Doc Martens, their long hair strewn over the back of the chair.

“Right, now that we’ve introduced ourselves, I’m gonna ask you to turn back around, boys. We’re going to go see all your shit right now,” Ellis said.

Patrick and Weston, who’d just sat down, forced themselves up again with an involuntary groan.

“Wait, seriously? Can it not wait until the morning?” Weston said. Patrick nodded along fervently.

“Actually, we’re still kind of processing all of this, if you wouldn’t mind holding off until –”

“I don’t know if I’m ready to go back there right now –”

“I kind of want my boyfriend to be there when we –”

They both trailed off when they realised that Ellis had their eyebrows raised at them, looking like they’d just won an argument.

“The five clients I’ve dealt with before you two were all chomping at the bit to get their shit back,” they said evenly. “If that’s your immediate reaction to going to view all of your possessions at the drop of a hat, you might want to lose a few hours of sleep tonight thinking about why.”

They got up and left the conversation unceremoniously, dropping their hand into the free mints on the table like an arcade claw and shoving them all in their mouth. Once they were away at the desk, chatting to the receptionist, Weston said, “the fuck kind of counselling was that?”

Mr. Nguyen shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it.”

Weird or not, Patrick couldn’t deny that it had been effective. Mr. Nguyen sat them down and talked through everything they had, all the financial talk that used to bring Patrick to life, but his mind kept drifting. This, it was…it was _boring._ He just felt like he was giving himself extra grief by continuing to think about it. Ellis hopping back over in two strides and butting in every two seconds wasn’t helping, either.

By the time they finally got away and Patrick was able to slip into bed beside David, the cool pillow soothing on his pounding head, he curled himself into his boyfriend and cried. David didn’t say anything, and Patrick didn’t explain. They just held each other, letting the gravity and the uncertainty of the situation wash over them before Patrick finally drifted into an uneasy sleep. And whatever happened tomorrow, he would simply let it happen.

***

“Oh…my…God.”

 _“This_ is where you used to live?!”

Alexis and Stevie were, as Patrick had predicted by the indulgent smiles on their faces when they’d asked to tag along today, absolutely loving this.

They paced their way round the living room of Patrick’s old apartment, peeking into the endless cardboard boxes full of his old stuff. Even David was struggling to hide his adoration for the clean-cut marble and the dining table that had been replaced in the middle of the room, despite the thin layer of dust on its surface.

“As we said, Mr. Brewer, it’s entirely up to you what you choose to do with your belongings,” Mr. Nguyen said, ticking off the last few boxes of his triple-check. “As is commonplace, I’m assuming you’re wanting to get yourself settled again here.”

Squatting on the kitchen counter, Ellis snorted. David came over and placed a hand on Patrick’s back.

“It’s your choice, honey,” he said, but Patrick could see the effort it had taken to say that seated deep in his expression. Neither of them knew what Schitt’s Creek would mean for them and their relationship.

Patrick stared back at David, and as usual found himself unable to look away. The shiny, gleaming things poking out of the cardboard boxes were nothing compared to David’s eyes.

He was about to vocalise some kind of a decision, but the text he got in his pocket distracted him.

 **Weston:** _Fuck I can’t do this_

A moment later, he heard the tell-tale sound of steps outside in the hallway and knew he had to follow him. He excused himself and went outside to find Weston leaning against the building door, smoking a cigarette with unshed tears in his eyes.

“Can’t do what, man?” Patrick said. For some reason, it felt like he and his friend were going to come to the same decisions, so it was important for him to hear this. “What’s up?”

“All of it,” Weston choked out. “I don’t want a single fuckin’ bit of it.”

As soon as he said it, Patrick knew he felt the same. He just knew it.

“I think Alexis and Stevie might,” he said, earning a small laugh from Weston, “but everything else can get lost. I’ll – I’ll sell it, or something.”

“Ugh, our bank accounts,” Weston groaned. “Sorry to bring it up, but they’re gonna look like they did before.”

The ideas seemed to come to Patrick quicker than he could keep up. “Charities,” he said. “Anonymously, if you want. Take some home for your family or any local causes. The council. Schools.”

Weston was nodding along. “Okay. Okay, I think we can manage that. We can get that all sorted in less than a week.”

For a moment they were silent, looking out at the pass of cars and the endless commute. It looked clearer than it used to, the sounds of the city a lot more comforting than they used to be. Patrick would sometimes wake up and panic at the sound of it, as though everyone in the world was moving ahead and would get somewhere before him. He was never sure where he thought they’d beat him to.

Weston finished his cigarette and they went back inside, bumping into Mr. Nguyen on the stairs.

“Ah, there you are! I was getting worried,” he said. “Have you come to a decision about what you want to do?”

The two men looked at each other.

“Take the lot of it off our hands,” Patrick said firmly. “Well, let my friends look through it. But please, just get rid of as much of it as you can. We’ll retain a small percentage of the money to distribute to friends, families and local causes.”

Weston nodded, adding that he wanted to do the same.

“Well…that certainly is an unconventional decision, but it’s not impossible. I just need to take a call, and I’ll meet you back upstairs in a minute,” Mr. Nguyen said.

As they made their way up the rest of the stairs, Ellis winked at them knowingly on the way.

“Good choice,” they said. “You deserve it.”

Patrick smiled, thinking about the past few months in Schitt’s Creek. He _did_ deserve it, a life like that. He deserved the people he’d met. He deserved the quiet nights.

“Well?” David said as Patrick came back into the room. Patrick sighed as he leaned into David’s outstretched arms.

“I never really wanted to live here,” Patrick said quietly. “I think I just needed to know that I could.”

He looked over at Alexis and Stevie, who seemed to finally be satisfied with their loot of Patrick’s old belongings. Stevie had a toaster under one arm and a soup blender under the other, and Alexis was fixing her hair in the mirror he used to keep in his bedside drawer.

“I’m ready to go home,” Patrick said.

David scoffed at him. “What, without having a proper pre-Christmas holiday in New York and doing all the cheap, cringey, tourist things that I usually do?”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

***

In between the arduous handling of money with Ellis and Mr. Nguyen, they managed to fit in just about every possible New York-esque activity that David couldn’t believe Patrick had never done. They watched the Christmas trees and lights gradually coming up, ate their body weight in shrimp buckets and pizza, and Patrick realised it was the first time he’d been in this city without feeling alone.

On the last night, they went to see _Great Comet,_ which David insisted upon for “inspiration”. Patrick kept a close eye on his character, Pierre, the entire time, and found himself falling in love with his story. An unhappily rich man, his friends and peers perpetually confused at his reclusive behaviour and unable to fathom how he couldn't love someone as beautiful as his wife.

_“They say we are asleep until we fall in love,_

_We are children of dust and ashes…”_

By the time the ending came, and Pierre was entranced by the comet in the sky, Patrick could feel the tears streaming freely down his face.

_“The comet; said to portend untold horrors and the end of the world._

_But for me, the comet brings no fear – no, I gaze joyfully…”_

A destructive thing, something known to ruin people. Patrick thought he had been ruined, thought being stripped down to his base components would be the undoing of him. Quite the opposite, in reality. It had been his rebirth.

He was going to enjoy this character more than he originally realised.

Two days later, they took Weston to JFK with his small suitcase.

“So, what now?” Patrick said, realising that he and Weston hadn’t really talked about the future since last week.

Weston sighed. “Well…I’m not sure I’m gonna come back. I wanna stay in Newcastle. I just feel like I want to be back on the farm with my dad, doing what I was always meant to do.”

Patrick nodded. He hugged Weston tightly, hoping this wasn’t the last time he saw his best friend.

“Well, if you’re ever in North America, make sure you hop right over New York and come visit Schitt’s Creek,” he said.

Weston smiled. “Course I will.”

As he walked away, reminding Patrick as he always had done of Judd Nelson in _The Breakfast Club,_ David hugged him tightly from behind and stuck his chin over Patrick’s shoulder.

“How long’s it been since you flew economy, Patrick?” David said.

Patrick laughed. “Too long.”

Just before they got on the plane, Patrick’s phone buzzed with the conversation he’d been having with his dad over the past couple of days, updating him about what was going on.

 **Dad:** _What decision did you make, son?_

 **Me:** _The right one._

They got back to Schitt’s creek at 7pm that night, just as Johnny and Moira had finished slotting the Christmas tree into the stand in the living room.

“Alexis!” Moira called. “I was becoming concerned our tradition would have to be incorrectly belated by a day.”

Alexis went through to the living room giddily to greet her mother, and Patrick turned to David.

“Tradition?”

David tried to explain, but Stevie cut in. “Cocoa, eggnog, gingerbread, cookies, and an endless Christmas music dance party. As everything is with the Roses, decorating the Christmas tree is a whole event.”

David closed the door behind them, and such a strong feeling of coming home flooded Patrick’s senses that it threatened to spill over in tears.

Stevie all but bounded into the kitchen to likely spike the cocoa with brandy. Patrick turned around and captured David’s lips in a firm kiss that left them both warm and grounded.

“Do you want to wait til before or after Stevie has spiked the cocoa to get a drink?” David said.

Patrick considered it a moment. “Both, I think,” he said, turning on his heel to beat Stevie to the richly scented pot of hot chocolate in the kitchen.

His kitchen.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing to say for myself.
> 
>  _This,_ friends, is why I don't tell myself I'll update a WIP weekly and then write as I go. Lesson learned. I know there's no obligation to finish and I'm not on a deadline, but I'm kind of annoyed how long I let this story sit! I really, really missed writing it but I was worried I wouldn't be able to do the rest of it justice with a rushed ending. But here we are, finally. I'm glad I got this bit out. 
> 
> Enjoy!

While Patrick couldn’t have imagined a better way to spend Christmas if he tried, every day was still blotched round the edges with an unpacked trepidation. He and David had agreed no presents until money was a bit surer on its feet, and the idea of there being long-term future plans with David filled Patrick with warmth, but the new year had always filled him with anxiety. Before, his years were always split into even quarters, all peppered with inventories and finances and constant strives towards growth, but this year felt like a true dip into the unknown.

“New Year’s Day was always the busiest day of the year for me,” Patrick murmured, as he snoozed his way through the afternoon of it in David’s lap. Stevie and Alexis were still asleep, deeply hungover from the night before, and Johnny and Moira were having dinner with the Schitt’s.

David hummed in response, carding his fingers through Patrick’s hair. “Mm. What did you do?”

He opened his mouth to accept the chocolate David was waving towards his mouth. “I don’t know,” he said, muffled around the oddly flavoured strawberry liqueur. “Plan things. Budget. Make spreadsheets for profits and things that I barely understood.”

“I used to have a ten-year plan back when we had money,” David said, popping his own chocolate into his mouth.

“At thirteen years old?”

“Mm. I was a very efficient child. Most of my plans had something to do with sushi restaurants in Japan or a walking tour of English forests that inspired fairytale characters, but they were all color-coded and separated into binders.”

“And none of them have ever come to fruition?”

David laughed mirthlessly. “Please. The only times I’ve been out of Canada in twenty years are for New York and that time Alexis and I got on the wrong plane and ended up in Rafah instead of Rio.”

Patrick grimaced, then repositioned himself so the crown of his head wasn’t being stung by the fireplace. David opened his arms to let Patrick curl into him, his warm face pressed into David’s neck.

Patrick had spent the past few weeks of holiday celebration thinking about how easily he could get used to this. But sometimes, in moments of utter stillness and silence like this one here, he fumbled. Something inside him picked up and put on its alarm bells when he was talking about money yet doing nothing about it, when he was talking about loss in a space where he felt like he’d done anything but.

“How long did it take you?” Patrick said. It was more of a mumble, spoken quietly into David’s neck. He didn’t want to keep rehashing old issues all the time, but _we can talk whenever you’d like_ echoed in his head and he reminded himself that he was safe here, safe to talk about whatever was bothering him.

“How long did it take me to what?”

“To fully get used to being here.”

David let out a low, slow exhale. Patrick couldn’t see his face, but he could feel the tendons in David’s neck stretching as he looked around the little living room. His mom’s sewing machine, the mirror over the fireplace, the modest TV.

“Believe it or not, I don’t know if I ever did. I had a strange moment about a year ago now where I’d been out drinking with Stevie and the next day I came down the stairs, expecting Adelina to be standing there with a plate of orange and cranberry scones.”

Patrick looked up at David then. “How long did that last?”

“Oh, about a second,” David said. “Trust me, nothing sacred lasts long when Johnny and Moira Rose are doing an ancient Egyptian walk around the kitchen to the beat of _Stayin’ Alive._ I snapped right out of it.”

Patrick laughed, settling himself back down again.

“It didn’t mean much, and honestly after that I cared more about the fact that my parents were burning breakfast while they were dancing to the radio, but it got me thinking,” David went on. “There was never some big moment where I suddenly decided to stop running away, or stop turning my nose up at the Café. It was just lots of little things, rolling in little waves, and I’m always kind of…suspended on top of it.”

Patrick nodded. He reckoned that was sort of how he felt too. Sometimes he slipped off the little paddleboat he’d made for himself here and was left dangling and cold in the sea of his mistakes. Sometimes, he was content enough to lie back and fall asleep on the raft. There’d never be a finish line or a stable solution. It was just life, and that had to be enough for now.

“That makes sense,” he said sleepily, bedding himself down into David’s arms. David leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of Patrick’s head, smiling into it.

Patrick closed his eyes. He was too close to sleep to tell, or to wake up and say anything about it, but a moment later he felt the minute drag of David’s lips over his hair in such a way that felt shaped like _I love you._

***

That was the answer, going forward. Little things.

Now that Patrick had rid himself of all his money, and of the possibility of ever _ever_ getting it back, the only thing he could do was focus on the corners of his life here that mattered. There was no bigger picture, no finish line. It was the freest Patrick had ever felt.

For some reason, one of the first things this gentle revelation saw him do was reach for his phone and dial Rachel’s number.

There were a frustrating amount of rings before she picked up.

“Hello?” came the soft, familiar voice. She sounded like she’d just woken up.

“Rachel, hi.”

“Patrick? What – are you okay? Has something happened? Do you need –”

“No, no, I’m fine,” Patrick assured her, realising with a pang of guilt that he never got her up to speed since he lost everything. In her head, he was still in the danger mode of September, wet and shivering with his Bugatti parked outside the dingy motel.

“Oh, okay.” Rachel said, sounding a little winded.

It struck Patrick, suddenly, that this was the first time they’d spoken since their breakup last winter. He’d lived in their huge penthouse alone for seven months before he lost everything, and while he’d since been made aware that the hurt had settled for her too it was no less awkward.

“So. If you’re not in danger, then…how are you?”

“I’m, uh, I’m good. A lot better than I thought I’d be, actually,” Patrick added as he watched David’s figure come back from the Café with two cups of tea and a paper bag of cookies clamped between his teeth. They’d spent the morning in the store getting ready for next week’s opening, and things were coming together more and more by the day.

“Good, good. I’m glad,” Rachel said. There was a pause on the line, and before it could turn too uncomfortable Patrick looked around the store again and an idea came to him.

“Hey, you’re not busy in the next two weeks or so, are you?” Patrick said suddenly.

“No, why?”

Patrick took a breath. “How would you feel about meeting up? We’re – I’m actually doing something at the moment. A business thing. It’s not big, and I’m still just finding my feet here, but it would mean a lot if you could come along to the opening.”

“I…suppose I could make it, but –”

“And to be honest, I miss you, Rachel,” Patrick said.

There was a small ‘oh’ on the line that Patrick almost missed, followed by a small sigh. “Patrick, you know we can’t –”

“No, no! I know. I ended things, and it’s…it’s over. I miss you as a friend, Rach. After…well, after everything, I feel like I might need a couple more of those around.”

“Alright, I’ll see if I can make the journey. Where is it that you’re living? Or staying?”

“It’s called Schitt’s Creek. I’ll text you the address.”

Rachel must have taken a sip of something as soon as Patrick said that, because she spluttered like she was in a movie and started to wheeze with laughter.

“I’m not joking.”

“No, I know! Oh my God, Patrick. You – sorry to bring it up, but you got scammed out of all your money, and ended up in a town called _Schitt’s Creek?_ Can I tell my mom?”

Patrick laughed too. He couldn’t help it. “Tell her all you like. I don’t mind.”

“Thank you.”

At that moment, the bell above the door jangled and David kicked it closed behind him, opening his mouth to drop the bag of cookies on the middle table.

“I have to go, but I’ll text you later Rach. Enjoy whatever it is you’re drinking.”

Rachel giggled again. “Enjoy Schitt’s Creek!”

Patrick smiled as he hung up. _Oh, I will._

“Who was that?” David asked as Patrick locked his phone and put it back in his pocket.

“Rachel,” he said.

David’s eyebrows shot up. “Ex Rachel?”

“Mm. I invited her to the opening next week.”

David didn’t quite look offended at that, but there was definitely something in there that told Patrick he’d stuck his finger in an important and thorough David Rose Plan. _Affronted,_ perhaps, was the word he was looking for.

“Mkay, as much as I love the fact that you’re reconnecting with people, I did send you explicit instructions about how I wanted this opening to go,” David said, reaching forward to dance his fingertips across Patrick’s shoulders that conveyed the passive aggression that wasn’t _quite_ there in his tone of voice.

“You did. You sent me –” Patrick ducked his hand down to grab his tea – “lovely, color coded, itinerary-based instructions that, not gonna lie, I thought was very sexy of you, but I just…”

He cut himself off with a sigh, looking around the shell of a store that wasn’t going to be a shell for much longer. They’d painted everything and even stocked some of the shelves at the back.

“I’d kind of like the launch to be a little more – oomphy.”

“Oomphy?!” David repeated, his face twisted into a look that told Patrick he’d never thought he would hear such a word attached to his plans for this place and was very much not enjoying it.

“You know, oomphy! Like…hard. Official. In your face.”

“I don’t know how _in your face_ we can make a quiet rural boutique with a muted color palette, but I feel like there’s something here you’re trying to communicate and can’t quite get it to come out right.”

David reached behind him to grab the cookies and sat himself on the other side of the counter.

“If I’m reading this right,” he went on, “You want people to see how happy you are to be doing this little thing without any need for anything else.”

And just then, Patrick felt what he’d heard David whisper into his hair just over a week ago.

This is what love was, he thought. The knowing of your worst and weirdest thoughts, the celebration of your best ones. The sticking around despite it all. David was here, willing to let him take his own slice of accomplishment from something that was, for all intents and purposes, David’s endeavour.

And Patrick loved him for it. Loved him with and without it.

“Patrick?” David snapped his fingers in Patrick’s face. “Lost you there for a second.”

Patrick smiled into his tea.

“Yeah,” he said quietly. “That sounds about right.”

***

Four days later, the petite, red-haired powerhouse that Patrick had missed so much was bustling around in the motel parking lot, trailing cases behind her. As usual, she’d overpacked. Patrick supposed that was one of the habits from their wealthier life that she never gave up on. Well, that and the fact that she’d kept her extensive collection of Gucci slides after she moved out.

Patrick was waiting for her next to Stevie’s desk, fiddling with the business card tree and flicking them back and forth with his finger. Stevie yanked it out of his reach when one of the cards spun off and fell into her coffee.

“Stop fidgeting,” she snapped. “She’s going to come inside whether or not you ruin my coffee with dusty old pieces of paper.”

Patrick shrugged. He couldn’t argue with that. She was getting closer now, and he could hear her cursing at her own luggage.

“Damn stuff won’t – cooperate –” came the muffled voice from behind the door. Then she kicked it open and there Rachel was, flushed and bright-eyed. Patrick had never been happier to see her.

“Finally, you’d think she was…” Stevie was saying, but she faltered as soon as she caught sight of Rachel. Rachel met Stevie’s eye and something shifted in her gaze for a second, but she shook her head and turned her attention back to her bags.

“Damn, I get why you were nervous now,” Stevie breathed.

“I’m gay, Stevie.”

“I know the feeling,” she said distractedly, staring after the door as Rachel hurried in and out.

Patrick left Rachel to check in and get eye-fucked by Stevie, then met up with her again in Hockley’s tea shop. When they sat down at their table, Rachel wrinkled her nose.

“Is it just me, or does it smell like…” she waved a hand around, “in here. You know?”

“Not just you,” Patrick said. “That’s half the appeal, I think.”

Rachel peered into the open-doored back room of the tea shop, where teens were sprawled around eating brownies on beanbags, and raised her head knowingly.

“Ah.”

They sat down and ordered. Once Patrick had a steaming latte in front of him, he said, “So, what have you been up to?”

“Oh, I’m getting by. I took up an apprenticeship at community college and started a tailoring business.”

“You always wanted to do that,” Patrick grinned.

Rachel hummed and sipped her coffee. When she put it down, she twisted her mouth and ran her finger along the rim of the cup. “And, you know…exploring.”

“Oh yeah? Where’ve you been?”

Patrick was only half glad for the distraction. He’d been putting off telling Rachel about David, and while polite chat was delaying the nerve-wracking thought of coming out, he was anxious to get it out in the open.

“I…not that kind of exploring.”

Rachel huffed out a small laugh, ducking her head bashfully.

“I –” Rachel cleared her throat _._ “I’m a lesbian, Patty.”

Oh. Never mind. This conversation was happening, then.

Relief, pride and a lot of things suddenly making lots of sense flooded through Patrick’s nerves. He didn’t mean to laugh immediately, but he couldn’t help it.

“As much as I don’t want to step on your moment here, I…have come to a similar conclusion.”

Rachel’s face lit up with delight.

“I’m assuming you don’t mean you’re a lesbian,” she joked.

“No,” Patrick chuckled. “No, I’m gay. I met someone pretty soon after coming here, actually.”

Rachel’s eyes softened and she pouted in what looked like a silent ‘aww’.

“Am I about to hear some precious story where you fell in love with a farmer boy and re-learned the reason for the season?”

“Not quite,” Patrick said, thinking about his boyfriend’s sharp edges poking into the soft sides of this town, the way they both fit together inside it despite being anything but native. “Much better than that.”

They reminisce for half an hour longer, trading stories from the past year or so until the sun starts to lower and the fog and spray of rain sets in.

“I should get back,” Rachel said. “If you wanted to come and help me unpack, I wouldn’t say no.”

“I know that means _fold my clothes in that fancy way while I throw them at you,_ so…yes. Old time’s sake calls,” he said, settling the bill and grabbing his coat.

As the sky darkened into pitch black, Patrick did exactly that in the flat-carpeted motel room with its strange teal bricked walls. It was calming, rewriting his first miserable night here with one where Rachel would throw him an item of clothing and he’d marvel at the feel of the four-figure fabric or authentic leather before folding it neatly into the dresser.

While Rachel was in the bathroom, Patrick shot a quick text to David:

**Patrick:** _Staying here for a while longer, I think. <3 xxx_

**David:** _xxx_

It quickly fell into something like a sleepover. Patrick ordered some Chinese food from a place in Elm Glen and Rachel channel flipped until she found an old movie on the history channel. It felt remarkably like one of their old date nights, only with less Sicilian grape cordial and more shitty television reception.

Patrick remarked as such, and Rachel nodded.

“It’s funny, really. Thinking back and realising how much we acted like best friends.”

“We really did waste our time with each other, didn’t we?” Patrick said, leaning back on the bed.

Rachel thought about that for a while.

“No. No, I disagree,” she said eventually. “Yes, we might have not been right for each other for the obvious reasons, but I felt…safe with you, if that makes sense.” Rachel shuffled up to the other side of the bed and turned to face Patrick. “It was pretty unstable having all that money. At those big parties, hanging out with your colleagues’ wives. It was…exposing? As though someone could just swoop me up and kidnap me and take all my necklaces.”

Patrick’s chest ached with guilt. “I didn’t want that for you,” he insisted. “I promise.”

Rachel smiled sadly and patted his knee. “I know,” she said. “But it wasn’t your fault. Like I said, you grounded me. You made it all easier to deal with – well, when we weren’t fighting. I guess despite it all, you were always the Patty B I knew in high school.”

That was something Patrick hadn’t expected to hear at all. It stung his eyes and brought a lump to his throat that he wasn’t expecting. For so long he’d thought he’d lost himself, thought he was doomed to be sweeping up the vestiges of his old self for years to come. And here was Rachel, his lifelong best friend, telling him that he’d been the anchor she needed to get through the financial misery they were inflicting upon themselves.

“Thank you,” he said hoarsely.

They sat back to watch the movie and eat their Chinese, wondering if this is how it was meant to end up all along. Bare, stripped back, carrying their identities openly and proudly, falling back into being best friends over and again.

Patrick’s so glad it did.

***

“What kind of drinks should we have at the front? Is champagne too presumptuous?”

“David, we’ve been over this. What’s wrong with a simple lemon and mint presse?”

“Ugh, _presse,”_ David balked. “Even when you’re saying rich person things you’re gauche.” David flapped around the middle table of Rose Apothecary, neatly stacked and ready for the dissection of the general public, his hands circling around the empty space where he wanted a tray of drinks. “And _we’ve_ been over _this_. People are drunks. I put a tasteful cartoon of some booze on the flyers.”

Patrick sighed, crossing the store to stop David’s worried pacing with two firm hands on his shoulders. “David. It’s going to be fine. I’ll go ask Twyla if she has any Zhampagne.”

David breathed out, relaxing minutely. “I just want it to be perfect,” he whined. If there was something else brewing behind the expected anxiety of opening his story, then Patrick didn’t notice it.

“It will be! We have everything ready, and – look, people are already lining up. You don’t have to worry about anything.”

“People are already lining up?!” David said shrilly, and Patrick regretted his placation. “They’re not supposed to be here for another – six and a half minutes!”

“It’s a good thing! Look how excited they are.” David and Patrick both turned to the door to see a stern-faced woman craning her neck through the window impatiently. David bared his teeth in exasperation and Patrick turned him back before he could make any comments on the propriety of their first ever customers.

“Look. I’ll go get the Zhampagne, you let them in, it’ll be fine,” Patrick said, kissing the scowl from David’s face before he could argue.

By the time Patrick had collected the two bottles, there were already people filing into the building. He stopped on the other side of the road for a moment to watch them, giddy pride warming him up inside. His small corner of the world, enriched with old and new faces, all of them ready to receive.

Then, right at the back, there were two figures talking to Rachel that made his breath stop.

A light blue cashmere sweater that Patrick knew all too well. A bob of ginger hair. Patrick thought he could smell the apple shampoo from here.

He hadn’t seen his parents in over a year, and suddenly there they were.

Patrick watched them step into the store, looking around, and swallowed hard before crossing the road.

They already knew about David. That wasn’t the problem. There _was_ no problem, really, but it was just that…well, the last time he saw them in person he was slamming his car door and driving away from his hometown in the middle of Christmas.

_How did they even get here, anyway?_

Now that they were here, he kind of felt like he was showing them his project for the science fair at school. It was a fidgety, nervous feeling that made him wriggle and flutter inside, and he was desperate for them to be proud.

He didn’t head for them immediately when he got inside. Instead, he popped open the Zhampagne as quietly as he could and poured it out, slowly so that –

“Patrick?”

He stopped pouring. Put the bottle down.

Even slower than he had poured, he turned to his parents and let his mom wrap her up in his arms as he tucked his head into her shoulder.

A slew of _I missed yous_ and _I’m sorrys_ tumbled out of his mouth, accompanied by the tears pooling on Marcy’s shoulder and softened by her hand rubbing his back.

“Look at you, Patrick,” she said. “Look what you did. I’m so proud of you both.”

Patrick pulled away and hiccupped out a small laugh. “Believe me, the design is all David. I’m just the numbers guy.”

Marcy tutted. “Give yourself some credit, son! It’s not just the store I’m talking about. Look at the life you’ve made here. You should be proud of yourself.”

“And fancy Rachel being here, too!” Clint added, though there was thankfully none of the usual are-you-getting-back-together hope behind it.

Patrick frowned as he wiped his eyes. “Wait, she didn’t invite you?”

Marcy shook her head. “No, dear. She didn’t.”

Patrick looked up towards the till, where David was ringing up someone’s order with a smile that looked far more genuine than it usually did when he was dealing with members of the public. He realised with a soft gasp that it must have been him.

David, who knew how important having Rachel here was to Patrick, invited his parents as well. Helped him reconcile another part of his life that he was certain he would have put off forever out of fear. David, who was starting to know Patrick better than himself.

If David weren’t busy, Patrick would have stepped over there and then to kiss him senseless and tell him exactly how he felt.

***

By the time the music playlist has started to repeat itself and Roses have come and relieved the store of half its goods, the crowd started to dwindle. Patrick saw David talking to his parents earlier, which saved him the juvenile embarrassment he would’ve gotten from introducing them.

“Good day, huh?” Rachel said, coming up behind Patrick and slapping a hand to his shoulder.

Patrick nodded as he surveyed the almost empty shelves. “Good day.”

By this point, there were only friends and family left in the store – the way David had always intended it – but he had no qualms about shepherding them out.

“Alright, the day’s over, people!” David called out into the crowd, slapping his hand onto the counter. “Thank you for coming, but I need a long bath and a higher-than-necessary dosage of Nyquil to dig the stress out.”

Patrick smiled as he watched the crowd filter out, and at David sighing exasperatedly as the last few people came to the till with their last-minute purchases.

“I’ll see you later,” Rachel said, winking as she left.

Marcy and Clint came back to Patrick’s side, and he hugged them both as they put on their coats.

“Come meet us tomorrow for breakfast,” Marcy said. “Feel free to bring David, too!”

“I’m not sure David will be getting out of bed in the morning, but I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Patrick said. He felt strangely weepy again, despite the mundanity of his mother’s words. Upon second thought, maybe it was because of them.

And he still had one person to thank for all of this.

Once everyone was finally, blessedly out of the store, David let out an exaggerated huff and flopped his head onto the counter. He squeezed his hand out from between his face and the wood and shot Patrick a thumbs up.

“Made it,” he said. “Next time, you’re on the till.”

“Next time? You mean we’re going to have another opening?” Patrick teased, coming over to join David. He gently manhandled him into a standing position and wrapped his arms around David’s waist.

“Well, this was only meant to be a _soft_ launch,” he said, “but I think that idea died a while ago –”

Suddenly, Patrick couldn’t help it anymore. He leaned forward and kissed David, soft yet firm, pressing his hands harder into David’s back as he pressed his tongue into his mouth.

David responded in kind, snaking his arms around Patrick’s shoulders. The little space left between them was warm, inviting, and Patrick wanted to stay there forever. It felt as though David knew what was coming.

Patrick pulled away first, just for a chance to lean back and look at David’s gorgeous face. He took a deep, shaky breath, and said it like he was saying thank you.

“I love you, David.”

David’s breath caught. He wrapped his lips over his teeth and closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to Patrick’s.

“I love you,” he said on an exhale, as though he’d been holding it in for days. For months.

They kissed again under the flickering, imperfect lights of the store, and Patrick spent the rest of their night wondering how his small corner of life suddenly felt like the biggest thing in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> \- Thanks for reading! Kudos and comments do a happy writer make.
> 
> \- Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://fairmanor.tumblr.com/), if you so desire.


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